Almost Innocent (38 page)

That night, Edmund lay beside his wife, conscious that she also was wakeful, yet he had no words to broach the silence. He did not know how to talk to her. If he could show her with his body how he felt, reveal his love in deed rather than word, he was certain this painful tension between them would dissipate. But she had said he must not touch her, so he lay stiffly away from her, terrified lest his leg should brush hers and the contact destroy his hard-won and hard-held control.

Suddenly, Magdalen pushed aside the quilt and slipped to the floor. “I will sleep on the truckle bed,” she said, bending to pull the pallet from beneath the high-standing bed. “I feel your torment, and I will not exacerbate it in this way.”

Edmund said nothing, simply turned on his side and closed his eyes tightly. Magdalen crept beneath the blanket on the pallet and lay staring up into the gloom. She was wracked with fatigue, but had gone long beyond sleep. Her legs twitched with a restless ache; her mind was horribly clear, thoughts, memories, futile plans tumbling ceaselessly. But she had to sleep. If she
did not, then her milk would dry up and Zoe would suffer. And the more she told herself she must sleep, the further from sleep she became.

Across the inner court, in the guest hall, Guy de Gervais was also sleepless. But unlike the two in the lord’s chamber, he was making no attempt to sleep.

“How serious a threat do you believe this to be?” He poured mead into two pewter tankards and handed one to the man sitting opposite him.

Olivier took it with a nod of thanks. He had arrived that evening, slipping through the postern gate just before the curfew had been rung. “Hard to say, my lord. The Sieur d’Auriac believes he can bring off the Lady Magdalen and remove her husband without help from Toulouse. From what I’ve seen of him, he doesn’t make idle promises . . . or threats,” he added with a grimace. In his sojourn in the d’Auriac household, he had seen plenty of evidence of the latter. Charles d’Auriac was not a pleasant man.

Guy frowned. He was now under orders to leave his erstwhile charges to manage their own protection and return to London. Edmund had told him that afternoon of Lancaster’s warning to him of a potential threat from the de Beauregard clan. From what little Edmund said, it was clear how much Lancaster had omitted. It was not for the prince’s vassal to repair that omission. He could do no more than alert Edmund to Charles d’Auriac.

He stood up and strode to the window. It was too dark to see anything but stars and a fitful moon, but he could see in his mind’s eye every sentry position, every watchman in every belltower. He knew the subterranean passages that ran beneath the castle to ensure that supplies could be brought within in case of a siege. There was a permanent garrison of fifty knights, vassals of the Sieur de Bresse, and two hundred men-at-arms. What could Charles d’Auriac possibly achieve against such defenses? It would take an army to breach the
walls of the Castle de Bresse, and such an armed attack by a French knight against an English knight in a time of truce was inconceivable. It would hold no just cause as motive, and without such motive to bring papal blessing on the assault, no man would attempt it for fear of damnation.

“God’s bones, Olivier, but I cannot for the life of me see how he could be so confident.” He turned back to the room. “I must travel to England as soon as the tourney is over. I will leave you here, but ensure that if Charles d’Auriac pays another visit he does not see you. He will undoubtedly recognize you now. Watch over the Lady Magdalen and get word to me if you sense aught amiss. It is understood?”

Olivier was not happy at the assignment, and his position was sufficiently privileged for him to make that clear. But his lord was adamant. Olivier would remain in his lord’s stead. He knew everything there was to know, and if the Lady Magdalen was in need of protection, he was to provide it regardless of cost.

Guy sent the man to his bed then, and contemplated his own. It was cheerless, offering only loneliness, but Lord de Gervais was a man of war, and he knew how to banish the inconvenient thoughts and the body’s recalcitrance in order to catch sleep whenever the opportunity arose. He had done what he could to ensure Magdalen’s continued safety. He had done what he could to ensure her marriage would be unsullied by their sin. He had done what he could to ensure Edmund would not suffer from his uncle’s breach of faith. There was no more he could do, and his grief was his own, his healing in his own hands . . . if they were capable of such work.

In the next days, he spent most of his time with Edmund in practice combat in the garrison court, riding out to hounds, watching him tilting at the quintain as if he were again a page or squire in training.

Edmund presented a cheerful, eager face to his
uncle, listening attentively to matters of business relating to the household or garrison, accepting all suggestions for entertainment, but Guy de Gervais knew something was awry.

There was something false and strained in his apparent contentment. Guy had known the young man too long to miss it, and anxiously he speculated on the cause. Magdalen would not have broken her oath. Indeed he knew she had not done so. The consequences of such a confession would far transcend Edmund’s present restlessness and unhappiness. But something was wrong between them. Guy suspected the root lay with Magdalen. He could command her silence, but he could not command that she treat her husband with the affection and respect he deserved. He could not command her to banish unhappiness, to put the past behind her and look to the future. He could command himself to do that, and if he failed, that was between himself and his conscience. But Magdalen’s behaviour had direct repercussions on Edmund, and her husband was suffering evident disquietude. His eyes never left her, watching her every movement, hungrily resting upon her when she was still. And if she was aware of this, she gave no sign, simply continued with what she was doing, offering her husband a word, a smile, a gesture now and again in such a casual manner, bordering almost on carelessness, that Guy could feel Edmund’s hurt. Why could Magdalen not feel it?

But Guy thought he understood what was happening. It was Magdalen’s unwitting sorcery again. From the depths of her innocence, innocent of her power, she could not help but wound those whom she bewitched. Edmund needed her love, and she was withholding it. On the third night, in his own restlessness, he discovered that Edmund’s distress had a more concrete dimension.

Guy was walking on the battlements, sleepless and unwilling to put himself to sleep in the ways that he
knew. In the donjon slept his child and the woman he loved. He had not seen his daughter alone since Edmund had arrived, had forced himself to sit on the sidelines when Magdalen had brought the child into the hall or the family parlor, longing to hold Zoe, yet knowing he dare not because of what he might reveal. Instead, he had had to watch Edmund’s evident delight in the child and his maladroit yet eager attempts to hold her and play with her, secure in the belief that the child was his. The denial of his fatherhood was a wound that cut so deep into Guy’s soul, he did not think it would ever heal, but he must live with it, though it gape for the rest of his life. But he must see the child again before he left. He could not leave without one last kiss upon that tiny brow, one last look at the petallike face, one last deep-drawn inhalation of the sweet milky smell of her.

He became aware of Edmund, standing against the parapet, outlined against the midnight blue-black of the sky. Edmund believed himself alone, and for once his unhappiness was undisguised, easily read in the strain in the broad shoulders, hunched beneath the short cloak, in the set of his head as he gazed outward as if what was inward was too painful for contemplation.

“Edmund?”

The young man turned, painted a smile upon his face. “My lord. You are up late.”

“It’s a lovely night. But what of you? You practiced long and hard today. Surely you are tired?”

Edmund shrugged. “Awearied enough, I daresay. But tormented.”

“By what?” Guy drew closer, his voice gently inviting.

Edmund trusted the man under whose care he had grown to manhood, and he found himself blurting out his pain without thought. “I have such need of her,” he cried in low-voiced anguish. “I cannot describe such need. But she says it is too soon after the birth, and I may not take her. But I am consumed with need.” His
knuckles whitened against the parapet as he clenched his fists.

Guy understood the need. It was one he had endured himself all too often during the long watches of recent nights. He could tell this young man that there were ways of assuaging that need that would not injure the woman’s newly healed body . . . They were ways he had practiced himself with the woman in the last weeks, bringing them both gentle release in verdant fields of satisfaction. But he found that he could not pass on such knowledge, not now . . . Not to this man, about this woman.

So he said, “Come, there are simple enough avenues for release, Edmund. We will go into the town.”

Edmund looked as if he would argue, but Guy de Gervais was already striding to the steps. He, too, would take his need and assuage it in the stews of the town. There were times when the boil must be lanced.

They rode out by the postern gate, both silent. It was not the first time they had ridden together on such an errand. During the years of their earlier campaigning, Guy had often steered the hot blood of youth toward the relatively safe havens of conventional release. He knew that suppressed ardor ill served a man during a campaign when the opportunities abounded for violent possession among the defenseless. In Guy’s experience, such excesses rarely afforded the taker much satisfaction and usually generated further excess as a means of assuaging angry frustration. More importantly, it took a man’s mind off the task at hand. Lack of concentration was as deadly in the field as lack of armor.

He knew that Edmund had once yielded to the seductive power of the victor, tumbling with a reluctant widow in a barn while her husband lay dead in the yard outside. And he knew that Edmund’s remorse had been as violent as the emotion that had fueled the assault. He was not a man for whom rape was the natural reward
of victory, and it seemed he was not a man to force himself upon his wife.

How long would Magdalen continue to withhold her body as well as her love? Guy wondered bleakly. The prospect of her submission to her husband filled him with limitless revulsion, yet he knew it must happen according to the course he had imposed upon them both. He could command it of her before he left this place . . . but he knew he would not. Edmund must find his own way to his wife’s heart, and find the key to unlock the sensual secrets of her body. They were both young and fresh to the world. He knew Magdalen did not hold Edmund in dislike. If it had not been for him, they would have dealt together in great harmony, and he must live with that knowledge.

Such reflections made him ill disposed to break his companion’s silence as they rode down the hill and into the town. The curfew had sounded at sundown, instructing craftsmen and laborers to cover their fires and cease working once the light became too dim for good work to be done. Some parts of the town were not sleeping, however. There was some work that was best done when the light was dim, and it was toward those streets that Edmund and Guy directed their horses.

Lantern light fell upon them from the unshuttered windows of taverns, and sounds of laughter and raised voices came from doors opened onto the rutted lanes. Muted giggles reached them from dark corners and shadowed doorways, squeaks and muffled protests as the lowliest women of the town plied their trade wherever the ground was dry or the wall straight.

Edmund drew rein outside the sign of the Black Ram. “I would drink first.” He spoke almost curtly.

Guy took no offense. “Where we are going, you may do both.” He pointed down the lane. “The house at the end, Edmund.”

Edmund nudged his horse into motion again, reflecting that Lord de Gervais had spent part of his
boyhood and youth in this place, with his elder half brother. It was hardly surprising he should know its secrets better than Edmund, who had left at the age of ten and returned five years later only to fight for his inheritance. He had as yet spent no time in the enjoyment of his demesne.

The house at the corner was shuttered and quiet, but Guy seemed unperturbed. He swung from his horse, and immediately a grimy lad appeared from the shadows to take the reins. The door opened before they could step up to it and a tall woman stood there, holding a lantern high. Her dress was plain and neat, her hair tucked into a starched cap.

“My lord. You are well come.” Her voice was soft as she moved aside, still holding the lantern aloft, inviting them within.

“I bid you good even, Jacqueline.” Guy moved past her. “The Sieur Edmund de Bresse.” He indicated Edmund behind him.

“My lord.” The woman bowed. “My hearth is honored.”

This was no whorehouse of the kind to which Edmund was accustomed. They were in a central room, swept clean, candles trimmed on the table.

“Griselde?” The woman called softly yet imperatively. A door opened and a girl entered, small, round, rose-cheeked, wiping her hands on her apron.

“Yes, madame.”

“My daughter,” Jacqueline said to Edmund. “Bring wine,
petite.”
She smiled at Edmund, inviting him to sit on a settle against the hearth wall. “You will take wine, my lord?”

“With pleasure.” Edmund looked questioningly at Guy, who simply smiled and sat down on the opposite settle, stretching his legs appreciatively.

Griselde brought wine and pewter tankards and poured. Then she sat beside Edmund, engaging him in a low-voiced conversation.

Guy turned to the older woman. “You have settled the matter of the blacksmith’s goat, Jacqueline?”

She laughed and sipped her wine. “The old rogue was forced to acknowledge that his wretched animal had eaten my cabbages when I put some bitter aloes on the turnips. They caught that goat nicely when he slipped through the fence for a further forage. Old Girard was spitting, I can tell you. But the town tribunal found that the goat had been ill tethered and ordered Girard to make restitution.”