Almost Innocent (37 page)

“You are going to swear on the bones of St. Francis that you will never, by word or deed, give your husband, Edmund de Bresse, the least reason to doubt your fidelity or the parentage of your child.”

She shook her head. “You are telling me I must deny you . . . must deny our love, everything that has been between us.”

“Yes, I am telling you that you must deny those things,” he said. “Swear on the bones of St. Francis that you will never give your husband the least reason to suspect what has happened between us.”

“And if I do not?” She clutched at her throat, recognizing the futility of her question. If he would deny her, then what purpose was there in her own steadfastness?

“Swear.” Taking her hand, he laid it upon the cold marble effigy. The candle he held aloft flickered in this dim, cool, holy place, and a bead of wax fell hotly upon her hand, contrasting acutely with the deathly cold beneath her flattened palm.

Magdalen swallowed, feeling the movement of her throat beneath her other hand. “Why would you deny us?”

“Swear. And then you will make your confession and you will be shriven.” His voice was quiet and gentle, but the imperative and the determination could not be ignored.

“On the bones of St. Francis, I deny our love.” Her voice choked, shook, her hand on the cold stone trembled, and her soul screamed its denial of the words he had forced her to say.

“You swear that you will never lead your husband to doubt the paternity of your child or to suspect what has happened between you and me.”

Her head drooped. “I swear.” It was a bare exhalation in the cold gloom, but Guy released her hand that he still held on the tomb.

“You will make your peace with God when you choose,” he said in the same quiet and gentle voice. “As shall I.”

They left the chapel, going out into the heedless sun.

The following morning, the Sieur Edmund de Bresse rode up to his castle to claim his domain and his wife, who rode out with the Lord de Gervais and a welcoming party of knights and their attendants to meet her returning lord on the plain before the town.

Edmund heard the alerting bells ringing from the four towers of Bresse when he was two miles away, the sound carrying across the plain in the clear morning air, and he knew he had been seen and identified. His heart leaped against his breastbone. Excitement surged into his toes. How was she? How would she greet him? What of their child? Questions he had asked himself over and over in the last weeks, and within the hour they would be answered.

Magdalen sat her roan palfrey. It was the first time she had ridden since Zoe’s birth, but she was too numbed, mesmerized by shock and spiritual pain, to find the exercise in the least enjoyable. She was dressed in a gown of silver cloth, a pearl-encrusted silver fillet confining her hair. The silver and pearl against the milk-white pallor of her skin gave her an ethereal quality, it seemed to Guy. Even her mouth, usually so warm and red and vibrant, was today the palest pink, and her eyes held none of their customary sparkling vitality; they were large gray pools of limitless depth and a haunting, mysterious sadness.

Guy did not think he had ever seen her looking more beautiful or more desirable, and he had never been more aware of the deep sensual currents running beneath that pale surface. The contrast between that vibrancy
that could not be diminished even by sorrow and the still, calm sadness was more powerfully arousing than he could have believed possible. It was unnatural, bewitching, a serpentine power that could be harnessed so easily for evil if once her innocence were breached.

For himself, he could only function by taking each minute of the day, one at a time, proceeding in orderly fashion to the moment when he could abandon the anguish of her presence and lose his grief once more in the violent pursuits of the sword. In the clash of steel, the smoking reek of blood, the agonized clamor of battle, he would find himself again, be freed of his guilt, lose the softness of the lover and remantle himself in the grim visage of the warrior.

Edmund saw the woman riding beside the Lord de Gervais, coming toward him across the plain. He could not make out the details of face or form, but he knew his wife. With an exultant cry, he put spur to his horse and galloped toward them, drawing ahead of his company. His horse reared to a halt before the first line of the welcoming party, lips drawn back over the bit as his rider hauled on the reins to arrest his stride in mid-gallop.

“My lady,” Edmund said. “I rejoice to see you well.”

“You are well come, my lord,” Magdalen said. “I thank God in his mercy for your deliverance.”

“The child?”

“A daughter, sound in limb and healthy.”

Edmund smiled, and all his love and joy was in the smile. He gazed around the sunny plain, embracing every blade of grass, every peeping daisy with his contentment. Then he turned to Guy de Gervais.

“I owe you much, my lord.”

The words stabbed into his very vitals, but Guy managed to smile. “God is indeed merciful, Edmund.”
He raised a hand in signal and the party turned their horses, Edmund falling in between his wife and Lord de Gervais.

“How is my daughter christened, madame?” He turned eagerly to Magdalen.

“Zoe,” Magdalen said. “For the gift of life. Her birth was long and difficult.” She saw from his nonplussed expression that he did not know how to respond to such a piece of information. Her pale lips smiled as she reassured him, but the sadness remained in her eyes. “It is not unusual, my lord, with first babies, and it is in the past now.”

“Yes.” He returned the smile. “But Zoe is an un-Christian name, my lady.”

“Pagan?” Her eyebrows rose slightly. “It disturbs you, my lord?”

Edmund frowned. There was a note in her voice that made him uncomfortable, and he
was
disturbed by the name she had given their child. Philippa, Elinor, Katharine, Gertrude—these were proper names for girl-children of royal and noble blood.

“The child bears also the name Louise,” Guy said quietly, “as I am certain your wife was about to tell you.”

“Yes, my lord,” Magdalen concurred, despising herself for that urge to taunt her husband, yet knowing that it had come from an instinctive anger that he should have attempted to criticize a decision made by herself and Guy for
their
child.

But Edmund was guiltless. She must never lose sight of that.

“Castle de Bresse is to host a grand tourney in honor of your return, my lord,” she now said. “My Lord de Gervais thought it would be a fitting occasion for such ceremony.”

“Ah, I can think of no greater pleasure.” Edmund was enthusiastic. “But I have had little opportunity in
recent months to practice my skill at combat, and I fear I am sadly weakened in my arm.”

“Then you will have a se’enight in which to practice,” Guy said. “I will gladly offer my services as partner in the garrison court and the tilting ground. Your strength will return soon enough with your skill.” Easily, he led the conversation to matters of combat, talking to Edmund as he had done in the past with the familiarity of the mentor, questioning him about Lancaster’s affairs and the court at the Savoy Palace. Magdalen, for the moment ignored and glad to be so, rode in silence between them.

Heralds blew the note of welcome as they rode beneath the arch into the
place d’armes.
The knights of the garrison were drawn up to greet the returning seigneur, and Magdalen slipped from her palfrey and took the stirrup cup of welcome from a page, offering it herself.

Edmund drained its contents in one gulp, then sprang from his horse. “Let us go within, my lady. I would see our child, and there is much that we have to say to one another after such an absence.” He gave her his arm, and she laid her silver sleeve upon the turquoise brocade of his tunic, thinking numbly how pretty the two colors were together. Unable to help herself, she looked over her shoulder to where Guy stood immobile beside his horse. Her eyes held a desperate plea, but he turned from it so she could not see his own piercing pain.

Abruptly, she was reminded of the day when Edmund had come to Bellair to claim his wife, and in his haste and his youthful impetuosity, he had hustled her inappropriately from the great hall and, with the same haste and impetuosity, had taken her virginity and consummated their marriage in an urgent, hurtful scramble.

She seemed to be living the experience again, except
that Edmund had more finesse now, was surer of himself, and clearly felt no need to assert his claim and his right to his wife with the precipitate insensitivity of the past. But then he didn’t know . . . And he was not to know, was he? She had sworn on the bones of St. Francis to deny her love and the last ten months of a loving idyll.

“The child is with my women,” she said, moving toward the outside staircase. “You will remember the way to the lord’s chamber, I daresay. Lord de Gervais has made many improvements to the castle and fortifications in your absence. You will wish to discuss such things with him without delay.” She heard her voice rattling on in an attempt to distance him from her, to pretend this wasn’t happening, that she was not going to the great conjugal chamber with her husband, was not about to present a child to him as his own—a child whose father meant more to her than life itself, but who had decreed that she must do these things and live this lie.

She led him to the antechamber of the lord’s apartments. Erin and Margery jumped to their feet, making reverence to their lord, offering thanks for his deliverance. He heard them out impatiently before saying, “Dismiss your women, my lady. I would wish you to show me my child.”

Magdalen waved the women from the room and went to the cradle. Zoe slept, flowerlike. At the foot of the cradle sat the doll that her father had bought her from the peddler. The tiny doll carriage stood on the windowsill above the cradle. Zoe was never to know they had been a father’s gift.

“Do you wish me to waken her, my lord?”

He shook his head, gazing down at the tiny mound with its soft red-gold down on the crown of her head. He looked at his hands, turning them over in curious wonder. They seemed so enormous beside the delicate frailty of his daughter.

Magdalen bent to the cradle and gently lifted the sleeping baby. “Hold her, Edmund,” she said, touched by the wonder in his face.

“I am afraid to,” he whispered. “I might break her.”

“No, you will not.” Her smile this time reached her eyes, and she laid the child in his arms. He held her awkwardly with none of the sure, confident ease of Guy de Gervais. But Edmund had had no experience as yet.

“Zoe,” he murmured. “I mislike the name, Magdalen. Let her be named Louise.”

“No,” Magdalen said, and her mouth hardened. “I bore the child, Edmund, and I gave birth to her. I claim a mother’s right to name her.”

Edmund had rarely seen the sterner side of his wife, but he had long bowed to her assurance, to the barely acknowledged fact that he could not gainsay her if she chose not to be gainsaid, be he her lord or no.

“If you wish it, then so be it.” He handed the child back to her. “Let us go into our own chamber now.”

Magdalen laid the baby in the cradle and went ahead of her husband into the adjoining room where she had spent so many glorious hours, had shared a lifetime of bliss and passion—bliss and passion that must last a lifetime, she amended.

“I will pour you wine, my lord.” She filled the jeweled cup from the pitcher on the table with the rich ruby wine of Aquitaine and brought him the cup.

“Drink with me.” He held the cup to her lips, and she drank. “I have been tormented with my need for you,” he said, trying to find the words to describe his agony of mind during the fever delirium, his terror of her loss, or of finding himself in some way not whole and therefore not worthy of her.

She listened to him without speaking, without moving, her great sad eyes never leaving his face. Then she took the cup and gently kissed his mouth. “Edmund, I am not worthy of such love.”

He groaned and wrenched her against him, crushing
her slender fragility against his chest so that she could feel the sharp metallic prick of his mailshirt through her gown. “I need you, Magdalen. Please,
now.”

But she pulled back, her face grave although her eyes were compassionate and understanding. “Not yet,” she said. “It is still too soon after the birth. I cannot yet.”

His whole body shook as he fought to bring his ardor under control, to stop himself from possessing her in a violent ravishing violation that would injure them both. His face was gray with the effort as he felt the sensual promise of her body, enticing him, drawing him toward some dark and swirling pool of desires as yet unspoken and unfelt.

“How soon?” he rasped finally, taking up the cup again, raising it jerkily to his lips. “How long must I wait? It’s been ten months, Magdalen, since I have had a woman.”

It had been a month since Zoe’s birth, and Magdalen knew she would not be able to procrastinate for much longer. But she could not face such a thing yet . . . not yet, while Guy de Gervais remained within the same walls . . . not yet, when the memories of passion in that great bed were so agonizingly vivid . . . not yet, not until the keen edge of her love had been blunted just a little.

“A week or two,” she said. “I am suckling the child, and it takes my strength.”

“Then put her to the wet nurse.” A harshness bred of frustration had entered his voice.

Magdalen shook her head. “No, Edmund, I will not expose her to another breast. The milk could be weak and thin, not as healthful as her mother’s. I will not risk my baby’s health.”

He sighed, but the painful urgency of a minute ago had died, and he heard the sense in her words. “I will try to wait in patience.”

“I thank you for your forbearance, my lord.” She
kissed him again, and there was no mockery in her words. “I will help you prepare for the feast. Your household will all be assembled to do you honor at dinner. Shall I have your squire summoned with your belongings?”

When Edmund de Bresse and his lady took their places on the high table at dinner, Guy de Gervais watched them. It seemed to him that they were both pale and strained, but Magdalen was fulfilling the duties of her position without fault, and the role of lord sat easily upon her husband now. Edmund de Bresse was no longer the eager, fiery youth of last year. Like John of Gaunt, Guy had read in the young man’s eyes the history of his suffering, and like John of Gaunt, he knew that Edmund had left his youth behind that afternoon in the forest of Westminster.