Geoffrey Condit (9 page)

    Once the infection drained, she flushed the wounds with herbal tea, and added honey.  She left the wounds open, spreading betony on the damaged flesh.   Then laying a compress of strawberry leaves over the wounds, she lightly wrapped them with fresh linen.  When she was done, she found him staring at her with quiet lucid eyes.  “I’m sorry for your pain, Peter,” she said, covering his nakedness with a fine linen sheet and a light wool blanket.

    “It will pass.”  The eyes veiled by his long lashes revealed nothing, but she sensed his need for private words.  Glancing about, she saw Abby and Elenor leaving the room.   Then they were alone.  She rested her hands on his arm, surprised at the corded strength still there.  He’d taken food well between the bouts of fever the last three days.

    “Anthony and Jacob told me what you did for the Fellowship of the Stable.”   His smile touched his eyes.  “Thank you.  Tell me, what did you feel during the experience?”

    Her mind went back.  The alarm in Anthony and Jacob’s faces when she told them of her plan, the fear she felt wondering if it would work.  The strange calm and odd clear heightened feeling while the meeting was going on, and the elation when all the pieces fell together.  The words came hauntingly, and then in rushes as it all came flooding back.  “I’ve never had an experience like that,” she finished. “It was like being unleashed.”

    “Amazing feelings,”  he agreed.  “I am well pleased.  You handled the situation with thought and care.”  He smiled.  “And not a little daring.  You’ve started a formidable reputation, Lady Trobridge.  People will think twice when they deal with you.”  He touched the gold pomander pendant hanging from the chain around her neck.  The rubies caught and winked in the candlelight.  He reached up and unhooked the latch, and a braided hair ring dropped into his hand.  He looked up.

    “Your hair,”  she said, swallowing.  “Your mother gave me the pendant.”  She felt the blood rush to her face.

    “I brought it in Venice six years ago.”  He captured her hand and put the hair ring in her palm.  “It looks at home on you.”

    The sensation of his fingers on her hand raced through her, making it difficult  to concentrate.  He restored her hand.  Breaking the connection brought her to her senses.  She breathed deep, shaken at the desire and wanting in her.  She’d learned too much, experiencing too much, since he’d been ill.   She’d learned of his childhood, his rigorous education, his travels, and his interests.  She’d experienced the fanatical loyalty of his people, and their unquestioned love for him.  And now that spell of caring and love captured her.

    His eyes, lit with desire and need, matched her own feelings.  He leaned to the bedside stand, and handed her a key.  “Would you care to lock the door?”

    As in a dream she took the key, and walked to the door.  She inserted the key, and in an urgent move turned the key in the lock.  She turned, feeling the pomander pendent between her breasts every sense alive.  Moving to their bed, she slowly removed her clothes. Heart beating, every fiber of her body screaming with need, she stared at her husband.  He opened the covers of their bed.

    In this captive time, this season of yearning, they reached for each other.  Gentle, urgent, the soaring and coursing needs raced, uniting until nothing else mattered, and they were lifted to that high plateau where joy forbade anything else.  Later, resting in his arms, touching each other with their hands, eyes and souls, Catharine marveled at the ways of love.

    When morning brought the duties of the day, they said nothing to each other about the night.  But great joy reigned in the household with the news Peter had crossed the threshold and was recovering.  “I owe my recovery to you,”  Peter said, the magic in his voice weak but real.

    Catharine felt herself blush.  “More to Abby and your mother, I think.  But I thank you.” 

    “Abby will be rewarded.  My mother has what she wants.”  He eyed Catharine seriously.  “Perhaps a ride would do you good.  You’ve been cooped up here for days.  Hugh and Agnes can take you.”

    Catharine rode out of the courtyard, surrounded by ten armed retainers.  Thoughts she’d forced away for days crept back.  The old hurts and disagreements of Lancaster and York, lord and merchant, festered in her mind.  Warring loyalties and feelings crowded forward and welled..  She’d been raised on poisoned stories of York treachery and arrogance that meshed neatly with anger at her personal tragedy.  The brief years in the York household of King Richard’s son, Edward, Earl of Salisbury, had done little but put her anger in abeyance.  During her time as a Ward of the Crown in the Duke of Buckingham’s Lancaster household, she’d been witnessed to snide remarks and ugly stories about York, tolerated by the duke as long as they weren’t exhibited in public.

    She closed her eyes, remembering the consuming terror of soldiers at the manor door ordering her family off the land in the name of the King.  Walking the road with nothing, but the clothes on their backs in the cold spring rain. Three days to find refuge. And then her father gave her into the care of a distant relative, who because Catharine’s mother was a distant Neville cousin, sent her to ‘Proud Cis’ Neville, the Dowager Duchess of York, who found her a place in her grandson’s household.

    Tears stung her cheeks, and she wiped them away defiantly.  Why couldn’t Peter understand?  She wanted to weep because the magic in the man so captivated her.  Her anger and hate were no longer safe, but shaken to their foundations.

    “Lady Catharine,” Hugh said.  “Lady Margaret Beaufort Stanley approaches with an escort.”  Catharine wiped her eyes, and composed herself.

    Emotions in check, Catharine waited as Lady Stanley walked her horse to a halt before her.  Flecks of foam decorated the mouths of their hard breathing mounts.  Lady Stanley’s hair and clothes lay windblown.  “Lady Trobridge,”  Lady Stanley said, “we met a Court two years ago,”

    Catharine inclined her head to the plainly dressed, sever looking woman.  “I remember, my lady.  The Christmas revels.”

    Lady Stanley nodded.  “I have news of your father.  From Brittany.”

    Stunned, Catharine sat straighter in the saddle.  A spark of hope blazed within her.  Papa.  Alive.  Mother of God, thank you.  “My father?”  The last news of her father had come from the duke when he’d spoken with vicious glee about the tasters.  Hardly news at all.

    Lady Stanley looked at Hugh.  “This not something  to discuss except in private.”

    “I trust my husband’s master-at-arms, Sir Hugh Addisson, and my maid, Agnes.  Feel free to speak your mind.”

    Lady Stanley kept her smile with obvious effort.  “Lady Trobridge, your father sent his message for your ears only.  I have a manor house close by.  We could repair to have privacy.”

    “You were saying about my father, Lady Stanley.”  Her hands clasped in her lap, Catharine sat on the settle in the main hall of Lady Stanley’s elegant manor house.

    The scraping of boots on stone brought her gaze to the far end of the hall.  Harry Barristar.  Another man swaggered beside him, sporting a broken nose, and blond hair swept over his left ear and tied back at the nap of his neck.  Seeing her, they ducked into the nearest doorway.  Hair stood on the nap of Catharine’s neck.  Danger shrieked in the back of her mind.  Angry at the intrusion, she drove the feeling away, and smiled at the older woman.

    Lady Stanley gave a forced smile and said,  “Your father is in good health, Catharine.  He is serving Duke Francis of Brittany as one of his counselors.”  She handed Catharine a letter.  “Your father wanted you to have this.  He thinks well of my son, Henry.”  There was something forced in Lady Stanley’s manner.  Strange.

    Catharine check the seal.  It was her father’s.  Her heat beat faster.  She broke the seal and read,

                       
My Dearest Catharine,

                   I have entrusted this letter to agents

                   of Lady Stanley in hopes you receive it.

                   When I think of you, I remember the little

                   girl I kissed goodbye on that rainy night

                   in May.  I yearn for the day when we will

                   meet again without fear.  Perhaps one day,

                   God willing, we will be united.

                   May God protect you.

    The letter bore her father’s signature.  “Bless you,”  Catharine whispered.  Lady Stanley blurred in her vision.

    “Catharine,”  Lady Stanley probed, “you were born and bred Lancaster.  What are your feeling now you’re married to a great York Lord?”

    The vague discomfit Catharine had been feeling surfaced.  The strange secretive atmosphere, the furtive glances of the servants, and too hasty retreat of Harry Barrister collected in her mind, making her uneasy.  Something was wrong here.  But this too faded, leaving only a fleeting awareness of the danger in Lady Stanley’s words.

    “I remember when the soldiers and their captain ordered us from our manor,”  Catharine replied.  “Their hard faces. The white rose of York, and when they looted the place.  None of us mattered anymore.”   Anger from twelve year old memories brought stinging tears to her eyes.

    “We can change that, Catharine.”

    She laughed, hurt in her voice.  “I’m sorry, my lady, but no one can change what happened.  We had our manors, and now the King has given the Barony of Westmoreland to my husband.  Peter calls it a hot bed of rebellion.”

    “Lancaster is not forgotten as long as my son is alive,”  Lady Stanley said.

    “For twelve years the Sunne in Splendor of York has ruled England without real opposition,”  Catharine said wearily.  “King Richard shows no sign of weakness.”

    “But remember, His Grace is surrounded by Lancaster,” Lady Stanley said,   a smile in her blue eyes. “The Woodville’s are Lancaster.  The Neville’s play both sides.  The Duke of Buckingham is Lancaster, the King’s most powerful lord, Catharine.  Things are not quite what they seem.”

    “Perhaps,” Catharine said, not convinced.

    “And Peter?  How does your Yorkist lord feel about the King Richard?”

    “He’s only interested in protecting himself.”  Catharine faltered.  Had she spoke too much?  She felt a great urge to confide.

    “But King Edward knighted Peter on the field of battle,”  Lady Stanley said, “at Tewkesbury not only for saving his brother, but for rallying the lines during a critical part of the struggle.”

    “You mean Peter turned the tide?”  Catharine asked in surprise.

    “Not single-handed, but Edward owed him much,”  Lady Stanley said with a wintery smile.  “More to Peter than his father.  The Seventeenth Baron only got in on the tail-end of the fighting, riding in from Gloucester.”

    “Then why wasn’t Sir William Trevor spared?”  Catharine asked.  “Surely they’d earned that.”

    “Edward gave leave for Sir William to swear fealty, but the man refused.  And Peter’s father forced his son to watch his uncle’s execution.”

    Catharine felt her stomach churn.  My intended.  “I didn’t know.  The sword is not easy to watch.  It must have been horrible.”  Poor Peter.  No wonder he avoids kings and dynastic wars.

    “I am sorry, Catharine.  I’ve been thoughtless.”  Lady Stanley to glance at her waiting steward.

    “My lady,” he said, “Dr. John Morton, the Bishop of Ely, and his nephew, Robin Nesbit.”

    The Bishop, a medium sized man within affable eyes and a ready smile, swept into the room, followed by a younger man in the black cassock of a priest.  Lady Stanley and Catharine kissed the Episcopal ring, he gave them both a negligent blessing, and settled into a chair before the hearth.

    Robin Nesbit stood tall and silent behind the bishop’s chair.  Catharine found his ink stained fingers curiously revolting, with a certain unnatural life of their own.  His wide mouth turned up in a smile that warred with a pair of piercing black eyes which seemed always to be sizing things up.  A chill settled in her stomach and stayed there.

    “We heard of the unfortunate accident to your husband, Lady Trobridge.”  The bishop smiled benevolently.  “What is his health?

    “His fever broke last night,”  Catharine said.  “We have good reason to believe he will recover fully.”

    “God is merciful,”  the Bishop said, and Robin crossed himself.  Catharine shuddered within at the strange crooked black fingers.

    “We were discussing the fortunes of dynasty, my lord Bishop,” Lady Stanley said.

    The Bishop smiled, eyes narrowing.  Robin straightened.

    “Do you think God wills who wins a battle, and rules a country?”  Catharine said.

    “God wills many things,”  the Bishop said voice as bland as his smile.  “God put the children of Israel in bondage to test them.”

    “Do you mean the people of England live in bondage under the hammer of York until a time when a Lancaster will take back the Throne?”  Catharine blurted, reading pleased astonishment on Lady Stanley’s face.

    The Bishop continued to smile.  “There are those who would believe so, Lady Trobridge.  I am a member of the Privy Council, and certainly wouldn’t suggest such a thing to King Richard.  I would caution you to keep such opinions to yourselves, ladies.  Treason extends to women as well as men.  But if you feel an intense need to confide these ideas, I think, Lady Trobridge, you can safely do so with Lady Stanley.  In private.  She understands, seeing how her son lives under the protection of the Duke of Brittany, and is a nephew of our late Lancaster King Henry, Sixth of the Name.”