Almost Innocent (9 page)

Lancaster shook his head. “I had acknowledged the coming child as my own, with documents witnessed in proof.” His voice was low with self-disgust now. “I loved the whore, would you believe? I intended to provide for the child.” His voice took on a distant, pensive quality. “Besides, there was too much death in the room already.” He seemed to look inward, to see again that dim chamber in the fortress monastery at Carcassonne,
the slaughtered monk at the door, the young squire with the dagger through his heart. He could smell again the reek of death, the blood of birthing. He could hear again the shrillness of agony on the lips of the woman he had once loved more than life itself. The woman he had killed, turning her own weapon upon her.

“I saw her mother in those eyes,” he said bluntly, offering the explanation without apology for his harsh rejection of the child as he came back to his surroundings again. “What features does she have of mine, de Gervais?”

“Your mouth, my lord,” de Gervais said promptly, sensing that some crisis had passed. “And some of your arrogance, I believe.”

The duke’s lip curled in slight amused acknowledgment. “She may have her dam’s eyes, but there’s the mark of the Plantagenet upon her.” He refilled his goblet and drank deeply. “The proclamation of legitimacy will go out across the land, and she will be wed at Westminster. We will throw down the gauntlet to France with much trumpeting. And after the marriage, her husband will go into Picardy and lay claim to his fief.”

“And what of Magdalen? She will be in some danger once her paternity is proclaimed.”

“You will keep her safe until she is wed. Then she may return to Bellair until this business is ended. The Lord Marcher will ensure her safety behind the walls of his castle.”

Guy de Gervais felt a pang for the child so soon to be abandoned once more in the wilderness of the border lands, her role played for the moment. But he knew she would be safer there than anywhere, and he had no reasonable alternative to offer. He himself would take up arms with Edmund, and since her father would not shelter her, there would be none here to protect her.

“Will you not say some words of softness to her, my
liege?” he asked. “She is afraid she has offended but does not understand why.”

Lancaster shook his head. “No, I do not wish to see her again this day. But you may assure her that she has not offended. Explain matters to her as you see fit.”

A loyal vassal must perform many services for his liege lord, de Gervais reflected caustically. This last task that Lancaster had laid upon his shoulders he would dearly like to forgo.

F
ROM THAT DAY
, Magdalen entered a world of terrifying confusion. Her reception at Lancaster’s hands had shattered some deep-seated confidence in herself. Yet she was told that this man was her sire. She did not believe that she was the duke’s daughter, whatever she was told by de Gervais and the Lady Gwendoline. Such a thing was not possible, so she would not even permit her mind to examine it. But the person she had believed herself to be, they said did not exist. She had lost one, could not accept the other, and thrashed in a torment of hideous loss and bewilderment. The constant surveillance under which she now found herself turned a stable, generally happy child into a violent rebel, alternating between frenzied storms and equally impassioned sulks. It was as if the escort who had been assigned to protect her became the symbol of this appalling thing that had happened to her. She would talk to no one, refused to go to her lessons, refused to play with the others. All her mental and physical energies were devoted to evading her guard, and she succeeded often enough to drive Lord de Gervais to distraction.

He told himself that her behavior was not surprising, that she was frightened and uncertain, thrust so suddenly upon center stage in this devious play of Lancaster’s composing. She was taken to court, was visited by all and sundry, whispered about, exclaimed
over, and she sat sullen and unmoving throughout, planning her next move in her battle with her escort. She climbed through windows, down apple trees, hid with the hawks in the mews, put spur to her horse and set her to jump the river, catching her guards completely by surprise.

Gwendoline grew weaker by the day, and Guy watched in wretchedness as she faded before his eyes. But throughout, she struggled with Magdalen, giving her all the loving understanding and kindness that she had within her, praying that acceptance would come to the child soon and this dreadful destructive storm of uncomprehending rage would die.

One evening, Guy found his wife weeping quietly in despairing frustration at Magdalen’s latest intransigence, and his patience deserted him. He beat the child and sent her supperless to bed. The effect was devastating. Magdalen wept all night with such violence that she became febrile, locked in some wracking tussle with her grief and perplexity. The apothecary cupped her, they purged her until she could barely struggle from the bed, but still the harsh sobs tore through the fragile frame. Finally, summoned by his distraught wife, Guy came into the chamber, leaning over to push the soaked strands of hair from her brow. Her eyelids were so swollen as to be almost closed, and his heart turned over with remorse and pity.

“There now,” he said softly, aware of his inadequacy in the face of this monumental unhappiness. “Hush now, pippin. Hush now.” He lifted her from the bed and sat with her on his knee. Gradually, words began to emerge through the sobs, gasping, disjointed words of apology.

“We must pardon each other,” he said when he could finally make sense of what she was saying. “I lost patience, but I cannot suffer it when my lady is unhappy, and you had made her so.”

Her sobs began to die down as he held her, and the
words began to flow as the tears had done. All her fear, her bewilderment, her anger came forth, and Lady Gwendoline sat beside her husband, holding the hot damp hand in hers. “He does not like me,” Magdalen said with a final gulp. “If he is my sire, why did he look at me with such hatred? Why did he send me to Bellair to make me think that Lord Bellair was my father? Where is my mother?”

“Your mother is dead,” Gwendoline said, “as we have explained to you.” Gritting her teeth, she told the tale that all knew to be a blatant falsehood. “She was but briefly wed to his grace of Lancaster and died in giving birth to you.”

“Your identity had to be kept secret for reasons of policy,” Guy said. “As now, for reasons of your safety, you must remain under guard at all times. I have explained that.”

The child in his arms was very still, the violence of her earlier weeping evident now only in an occasional gulping sob as her body found its ease. Finally, she lifted her head from his chest. Her voice was scratchy after the tempest of weeping, but it was calm. “If it must be, then it must be.”

The Lord and Lady de Gervais looked at each other in silent relief. It was over.

T
WO WEEKS BEFORE
the Lady Magdalen of Lancaster married Edmund de Bresse at Westminster, Gwendoline died. She died in her husband’s arms, and he could only be thankful for the merciful oblivion that brought an end to sufferings that had become unendurable. His own grief was a canker, spreading from his soul to infect all around him, darkening his vision so that he saw the sun as a dim cold circle in a murky sky, dulling his senses so that the richness of new-mown hay, the freshness of lavender, the tang of cinnamon were as savorless as chaff upon the tongue.

Everyone grieved for a lady so beloved, but all were
thankful that her torment was concluded, and in no breast lurked the fear that the Lady Gwendoline’s soul was destined for anywhere but heaven.

Magdalen’s sorrow was twofold. She grieved for the Lady Gwendoline, but she could not endure Guy’s grief. She did not know how to comfort him, yet she was unable to stand aside. The wedding would take place as decreed, because how could such a state and politic event be postponed for the death of a peripheral figure? But she ignored all the preparations. Her betrothed was far too busy training for the grand campaign that would win him his spurs and the power of his fiefdom to concern himself with anything outside the basic facts of the marriage that must be solemnized before he could depart for France. All his previous efforts at courting Magdalen had fallen upon stony ground, so he returned his attention to the other and most important function of the knight—war.

Magdalen spent her time following de Gervais. She was always to be found at his side at the long refectory table, picking the choicest morsels for him from the serving platters, filling his cup. She crept into his privy chamber, sitting in a corner, quiet but watchful as he attended to his affairs or simply sat, staring into the wasteland of memory. When he went forth on business, she was waiting for his return, watching critically as his page cared for his needs.

Guy was but vaguely aware of her until the evening before her wedding, when he went into the pleasaunce, a place painful to him because in every shadow he saw Gwendoline, picking lavender, dabbling a finger in the birdbath, bending to pluck a weed from the unsullied beds. The place was painful to him, yet he could not keep away from it and would pace for long hours along the walks.

On this evening, he found Magdalen sitting beneath an espaliered apricot tree, and he remembered with
guilty remorse that she was to be wed on the morrow and he had had no speech with her in days, it seemed.

He sat beside her, but before he could say anything she whispered with a strange, fierce passion, “If I do not have my terms, then I cannot be bedded with Edmund before he leaves for France, and the marriage could be annulled and then we could be wed, you and I.”

Shaken from his absorption, Guy stared at her in shock. “What folly is this, Magdalen. You are distempered.”

“Nay, sir,” she returned stoutly. “I love you and I have always loved only you, and I will always love only you. When the Lady Gwendoline was your lady wife, then of course it could not be. But now—”

He stood up abruptly. “We will forget this ever took place, Magdalen. You are still but a child and in the midst of much excitement and confusion. The day after tomorrow you will return to Bellair Castle, and you must pray for your husband’s safe return and successful enterprise.”

“I will pray for yours,” she said, the gray eyes glittering with a determination that chilled him with its strength. She was indeed the child of Isolde de Beauregard and John, Duke of Lancaster.

L
ADY
M
AGDALEN DE
B
RESSE
had come to the conclusion that tourneys were simply occasions where bouts of murderous sound and fury alternated with irksome heraldic ceremonies. As a child, she had longed passionately for the opportunity to watch a joust. Maybe it was simply that the years that now separated her from her childhood had invested her with a certain cynicism, but she could not, however hard she tried, see why these men would wish to enclose themselves in pounds of plate armor on a steaming August afternoon in order to ride at each other, their war cries rending the air, and belabor each other with lance or the flat of a sword until one of them fell off his horse to lie helpless like some monstrous chrysalis in an iron cocoon.

She kept such heresy to herself, however. In the crowded tiers surrounding the lists, excitement and pleasurable fear were nearly palpable. In the midsummer heat, such emotions brought damp foreheads and clammy hands, not helped by the richness of dress, the fur-trimming of surcotes. But neither man nor woman would let comfort dictate when wealth and status were adjudged by dress. Magdalen herself was sweltering, feeling sweat trickle beneath her arms and collect between her breasts, and she surreptitiously eased the heavy damask of her gown away from her skin so that it should not become stained.

The lady on her right had been whispering prayers to the saints for the safety of her lord throughout the
morning’s combats, whether the knight in question was engaged in a joust or no, and at every clash of steel, little moans of mingled excitement and terror broke from her lips, interrupting the incantations. The dust was so thick it was impossible to see exactly what was going on during the jousts and melees, for all that Magdalen was seated on the front bench of the Lancastrian loge. The king was absent this afternoon, so the adjoining loge was empty, the tournament falling under the command and patronage of Lancaster. The banner of the Plantagenets, displaying the lily of France and the leopard of England, flew over the scarlet canopied booth. The duke was seated in the center of the velvet-covered platform at the front of the loge, his carved chair all hung about with scarlet draperies embossed with the red rose. He was in morose mood, misliking the role of spectator on such occasions, and his wife, the Duchess Constanza, sat beside him in nervous silence, knowing better than to intrude upon his grimness.

The marshals entered the stockade, followed by the heralds and their pursuivants. Magdalen sat forward expectantly. The event which required her presence was about to be announced. The dust from the preceding melee had settled somewhat, aided by the buckets of water sprinkled over the surface of the arena. Trumpets blared as the heralds announced a private joust between the Sieur Edmund de Bresse and the Sieur Gilles de Lambert.