Elizabeth Chadwick (54 page)

Fulke returned shortly after. Still in his mail and saturated cloak, he swept into the bedchamber like a whirlwind. Clarice leaped from her seat, a warning finger set to her lips, and he jerked to an abrupt halt. His eyes were wild, his entire demeanor one of suppressed violence. Swallowing, he took Clarice by the shoulders, set her bodily aside and advanced to the bed to look down on his wife.

“Mama sleep,” Mabile said. One small hand was folded around her mother’s thick silver braid. He looked down, his gaze so fierce that Clarice thought he would burn a hole in the bolster, then he swung around and came back to her.

“How bad?” he demanded.

“I am not a healer,” Clarice began, before he cut her off in mid-excuse.

“You of all people I expect to be honest. How bad?”

Clarice felt a tightening ache in her throat. She shook her head, making the gesture serve for all the words she could not speak.

The time seemed to stretch for eternity as she watched him take the burden of her meaning and settle it across his shoulders like the spar on a cross.

“I am sorry,” she whispered.

He said nothing. Spangles of rain glittered on his cloak and the wet steel of his hauberk flashed as he breathed unevenly.

“I have dosed her with syrup of white poppy to ease the pain…” Clarice said, wondering why there was no such remedy for pain of the soul. And now she had to hammer a nail into his cross. “But it might be best to send for the priest so that he is here when she wakes.” She touched him when he did not respond. “Shall I do that?”

His eyes stumbled to meet hers and she saw that they were opaque and glazed. “The priest,” he repeated slowly, as if they were speaking in a foreign language.

“To shrive her soul.”

His head came up. “She is not going to die. I won’t let her.”

He asked her for honesty and then he rebuffed it. She did not blame him. “Then to pray for her recovery,” she said tactfully as she took his cloak. “If you are going to sit in vigil, you must unarm. A sword cannot help you here.”

His look sharpened and focused, and she felt the force of his anger at his own helplessness strike her like a mace blow.

“You cannot hold her hand and drip rain all over the sheets,” she continued.

He gave a graceless shrug of capitulation and she helped him out of the wet hauberk and gambeson, ordering his squire to take them away for drying out. She brought him wine and wastel bread. He drank the former, ignored the latter, and seated himself at Maude’s side, his eyes intent on his wife’s face as if he would hold her to life with his will. His hand smoothed her hair off her brow.

Clarice hesitated, then left to fetch the priest, taking Mabile with her.

Very gently, Fulke pulled aside the bedclothes and raised Maude’s chemise to look at the damage wrought. The sight of the swollen, livid bruising filled him with fury and despair. How could this have happened? If the tree had fallen one moment sooner or later, she would have been unscathed. God’s will? How could God have willed something like this? Tenderly he replaced the covers and knelt in a position of prayer at her side. Her breathing was swift and her skin was hot to the touch. After a life of battle, he knew the signs. A man would be crushed by his falling horse, or receive several body blows from a mace or morning star; he might survive the impact, but never live for more than a few days. His urine would flow red, or not flow at all. He would develop a fever and die.

“Maude.” He took her braid in his hand, holding it the way their daughter had done. He felt hollow, an empty space where there had been a fullness of love and laughter, of quarreling and companionship. “Maude, stay with me.”

She moaned softly and her head moved from side to side on the bolster. Her eyelids flickered and she looked at him. The clear green was misted as if with fog, and her pupils were small, dark pinpoints.

“Fulke?” she whispered. Her hand groped and he took it in his, squeezing it as if he would imbue her with his own life force.

“Yes, beloved, I am here.”

“I told Clarice that she should not send for you, that she was making a fuss over nothing…but I am glad she did not heed me.” Her voice was a hoarse whisper. “It happened so swiftly. I didn’t even see the tree fall…so quick…”

“Hush.” He smoothed her hair. “Save your strength…”

“For what?”

“Ah God,” he groaned, swept by fear, grief, and the need to keep her with him. “Do you remember when we first met? You were the contrary little girl who had snatched my brother’s ball because he would not let you join his game?”

Her brow was furrowed with pain but she forced a smile. “I remember. What of it?”

“Be contrary now for me, Maude. I don’t want you to leave me.”

Reaching up, she touched his face and he saw her try to smile. “I don’t want to leave you either,” she said huskily, tears welling.

“We have years yet.”

“Yes. Years…” She closed her eyes. Her teeth clenched and he saw the pain tighten the tendons of her throat. He remembered she had looked that way when giving birth to their son on the banks of the Afon Morwynion. He had been helpless then; he was helpless now.

“Where’s Clarice?” she gasped.

He cleared his throat. “She has gone to fetch you the comfort of a priest—not that you need one.”

“I need…Jesu…” She broke off, writhing with pain and pointed to the flask of poppy syrup on the coffer.

Fulke picked it up. His fingers trembled as he removed the stopper. “How much?”

For a moment the pain rode her so hard that she was incoherent. He watched her fight her way through it, like a swimmer battling the tide, and drag herself half on to the shore, exhausted. “Two measures in wine,” she panted, gesturing to a small cup made of hollowed-out bone.

“You are sure?”

She nodded, biting her lip, her features gaunt with suffering.

With shaking hands, Fulke poured the syrup into the measure, then into the cup. Twice. Then added sweet mead to disguise the bitterness. Maude’s glance flickered to the door as if fearing an intrusion. Her fists clenched on the coverlet and as he set his arm behind her shoulders to lift her up, she cried out in agony. He tilted the cup to her lips and she drank. Some of the liquid spilled from her mouth corners, but when he would have removed the goblet, she grasped his hand and held him talon-fast, gulping and swallowing until she had drained the cup to the lees.

After she had drunk, she subsided on the bolster and briefly closed her eyes. He thought that she was going to sleep, but her lids rose and she looked at him. “Fulke, promise me that you will stand firm whatever happens; promise me that you will not break.”

Her gaze was as sharp as glass, piercing him with its intensity. “I cannot change the habit of a lifetime,” he said with a strained smile, trying to make light of her words and failing. They both knew the meaning. She wanted the security of his oath to take with her on her journey, and although he gave it to her willingly, he did not know if he could keep it. She was not his life, but she was the light in it, and how could he stand firm if he was stumbling in the dark?

“Promise…” Her voice was as clear and brittle as glass too.

Somehow, he found the strength to answer without faltering. “I promise.”

“I hold you to it…do not forget.”

The priest arrived with the articles of the sacrament in a small, leather-bound box. Fulke wanted to leap to his feet and roar at the man to get out, for in his dark Benedictine robes he reminded Fulke of the first crow hopping toward a corpse. Maude must have felt his aversion, for she renewed her grip on his hand.

“Let him come,” she whispered. “I am in need of spiritual comfort.”

Fulke slowly rose to his feet. “As you wish,” he said softly. He did not look at the priest as he left the room, but back at her. She met his eyes and her lips curved, but he saw the effort it took, and he could not smile in return.

Outside, Clarice was waiting for him.

“Do not,” he warned grimly, “play the mother hen. If you offer me food, drink, or a bath, I will not be responsible for the consequences.”

Clarice, who had been about to do exactly that, turned away and carefully added more charcoal to the brazier burning in the center of the solar. “You should send for Hawise and Jonetta and your sons,” she said, taking refuge in a different form of practicality.

He nodded. “I was about to summon the scribe.”

Clarice’s heart ached. She wanted to ease his burden, to give him comfort in order to comfort herself, but knew from his words, from the stiffness of his body that she would be rebuffed. She glanced toward the room where Father Thomas was occupied with Maude. “When he has finished, I will give her some more poppy in wine.”

“There is no need,” Fulke said with a brusque gesture. “I have already done so.”

Her eyes widened. “You knew the dosage?”

“No, but Maude did. Two measures.”

Clarice turned quickly away before her face betrayed her. One measure was strong and only just safe. Two would kill. Maude had taught her the lore, emphasizing the strength of white poppy syrup. She pressed her clenched fist to her breast, clutching the knowledge to her heart and feeling as if it would break.

Behind her, she heard Fulke’s shaken breath and the rustle of fabric as he moved. “She knew,” he said hoarsely. “Oh yes, she knew.” And strode from the room.

Clarice stared into the brazier and felt the delicate surface of her eyes begin to burn and smart from the strength of the glowing charcoal pieces. She could remember her mother dying of the lung sickness when she was a small child, but she had scarcely known her. The bond Clarice had forged with Maude, however, had been everything. Mother, daughter, companion, and confidante.

“I cannot bear it,” she whispered, and even as she uttered the words knew that they were an indulgence. She could and would bear the grief that was coming. She was Clarice the solid, Clarice the dependable, Clarice the gently mocked for her wise-woman ways. That she was also Clarice the bereft and Clarice the lonely were facets that would go unnoticed except by herself.

***

The November night was dark and cold. A single candle burned on the coffer and the faint scent of hot charcoal and incense filled the chamber. On the bed, Maude lay in the white, marble silence of death and Fulke sat beside her, gazing upon her face. Her eyes, those arresting cat-green eyes, were closed. Her blond hair glowed loose on the pillow, like that of a virgin or a woman recently in the arms of a lover. Smoothed of pain, her face was young, the skin clear, the lips curled as if at some inner amusement. But she would never laugh again, and neither would he, he thought.

After the priest had gone, she had lapsed swiftly into a deep sleep from which no one could rouse her. Their farewell had been said on the threshold of the room when she had smiled at him. He had known, but not wanted to know. Now, although the knowledge was with him, he had little comprehension.

“The life I have led, I always thought that I would be the one to leave you,” he said to the still form in front of him. “Wives become widows. Why didn’t you permit me that selfishness?” He touched her hair: thick, heavy, silver-blond. Many women lost the glory of their locks as they grew older, but Maude’s had remained abundant and the color meant that the first gray of aging did not show. Now she would never grow any older, but already he felt twice his age. He could have stopped her drinking from that cup; he knew he could, but only to prolong her suffering. Hers was over; his had begun. The troubadours who sang the ballad of Melusine had omitted the detail that when she flew out of the window never to be seen again, she took her husband’s soul with her.

The candle flame guttered as the door opened and Clarice tiptoed into the room, her gaze huge and dark in the shadow-light. A cloak hung at her shoulders and she carried a small oil cresset lamp in one hand and a flagon in the other. He looked at her resentfully. He did not want anyone intruding on this last night that Maude would rest in her own bed with him by her side. It was his vigil to keep alone.

He was thankful that she did not offer him wine, for if she had, he would have dashed the flagon from her hand. She poured a cup for herself and left the flagon within conspicuous view before seating herself across from him.

“We do not need your company,” he said.

She gave him a steady look, composed and reproachful. “I know that you do not want to share this moment, but I loved her too.” Then she lowered her head over her clasped knuckles and began to pray, her lips moving silently.

The silence stretched, broken only by the soft sputter of the candle as the flame caught an impurity in the wax. After a time, Fulke reached to the flagon and poured himself a scant cup. There was no sign of the flask of poppy syrup or the small bone measure. If it had remained, he might have been tempted to drink his own death.

He looked at the young woman quietly praying across from him. Candle and cresset lamp illuminated the gleam of moisture on her cheek. How was it possible to cry silently, he wondered, or was it just another sign of Clarice’s fastidious perfection? And then he saw that she was struggling not to break the cadence of her breathing, that beneath the cloak she was shuddering with the effort of holding herself together.

He watched, feeling pity, exasperation, and envy, for he was unable to weep. The wound was so deep that it had maimed all his responses. “Clarice…”

She made a choking sound and a gesture of apology. Rising, Fulke came around the bed and awkwardly folded his arms around her. It was the first time he had ever seen her discomposed, and somewhere deep within, his bleeding emotions struggled to respond.

“It’s all right,” he murmured. “Weep if you want.”

She turned her face into his breast and gave vent to her grief, clutching him so tightly that in the morning he would see bruises on his arms. Her voice rang in the darkness of the room, and the force of her breath stirred the light silver wisps of hair framing Maude’s brow.

He held her, stroking her braids. His own grief burgeoned within him, but did not break, for Maude’s death had left too vast a hollow ever to be filled.