Maid Marian (29 page)

L
ADY
P
ERNELLE HAD BEEN
watching for me, and when I returned she hauled me roughly to her own chamber and demanded my potion be delivered at once. I took my time in producing the bottle, but once she had it she cackled and squealed, seeing her son’s own premature death in its white crystals. For a moment or two I attempted to calm her, but she began to look at me queerly, and I recalled with a start my playacting character. Grimacing wildly in a reflection of her, I described how she should dilute the potion in some fluid, though I could see that she scarcely heard me, so deep was she in her own plans.

From this moment on my heart began to beat a rigid tattoo of fear, for I felt the same terror of that potion that I always had, and knowing that Stephen would be the one to drink it made my hands shake all the more. Thankfully, he had already retired by the time I returned from Titfield town so no terrible plans might be started that night. But the lady seemed untroubled by this and spent the evening whispering rounds of strange words to herself, twisting a lock of gray hair on her finger.

Sometime in the night Clym arrived. I found him near dawn at the manor gates and persuaded the guard to let him enter by smiling and playing the coquette with him. Inside we huddled in the buttery, pressed between the casks and kegs, and I shared with him the whole of my plan. A short conference explained it all, and I sent him off with a list of tasks and items to gather up for me.

“As you’ve ever been an outlaw, Clym, this is your moment to show it. Many of these things are under guard, or within the house, and will require every craft you possess to shimmy it out without detection.” But Clym just smiled and tipped his cap, and I felt the same reassurance in him that I’d had when I sent him to spy on the queen.

L
ADY
P
ERNELLE FLOWED
through that day with an eerie calm that every member of the household delighted in, not knowing, as I did, from whence it came. And after dining, when Stephen joined her in the antechamber where they took their wine, she hastened all the servants out and bolted the doors firmly behind us.

I wandered the hall outside that chamber for near two hours, but could hear nothing, solid as the oaken door was. I must have fallen asleep on the floor, my head resting on a mound of rushes, for when the lady opened the doors and screamed as though her life had ended, I started awake with such a fright that I think I have still not recovered. I dashed in past her, wild-eyed, and spotted Stephen slumped near the fire in a most unnatural pose, his face as white as chalk.

Too frightened to speak, I crept closer to him, conscious now of the other servants crowding at my back. I reached to touch his pale forehead. My fingers recoiled from his cool brow, but my eyes were drawn gruesomely closer by the twisted expression of his face. His mouth and eyes displayed such pain as made me shudder. ’Twas as if his lips had recoiled away from the very tongue that had met the poison. The skin of his cheek showed the pull of this tension, but beyond those things he bore no mark that could place the blame of his death on poison.

When the servants at last recollected themselves, a group hastened to tend to their lady, who wailed and fainted and cried out at length about the shuddering spasm that had taken her son, so cruelly, from his mother’s breast. I squeezed in as close as I could and, taking her birdlike hand in mine, asked in soft tones if she would like me to tend to the body and have it laid in the chapel. She nodded with whimpers, tears lighting her eyes, and I recalled in an instant her grief over Hugh and could no longer doubt that those gestures of mourning had been equally false.

Chapter Twenty-five

I
HAD MY OWN REASONS
for wishing to have sole control over the body, for I did not know if Stephen would exhibit any symptoms of sleep rather than death, and I couldn’t risk allowing anyone beyond myself to be witness to it. So, without wasting a moment, I gathered two guards, stout and sturdy men, and directed them to carry young Stephen to the manor chapel. When they’d lifted him up, I dashed ahead, anxious to prepare a space.

’Twas the custom to lay the body of a deceased noble out for perhaps a day or more, that his family might visit and mourn their loved one before the corpse went into the ground. This, of course, would be the end of us, for Stephen would awaken at dawn and destroy our perilous charade. So I dashed, candle in hand, to the carpenter’s shack out in the yard and requested two more guards to carry the rough pine coffin he’d recently finished—for, sadly, deaths were common enough in Sencaster to warrant having a box prepared on any day of the week.

On my way I roused a band of tradesmen from where they slept in a chilly hall and bade them hasten to dig a grave among the family tombstones, telling them that their master had perished of an unknown sickness and ’twas thought best to put him in the ground as soon as we could. The thought of illness hastened them on, and I watched, gratified, as they scurried for spades and snatched up lanterns for their night of work.

I had the pine box placed upside down on the floor of the chapel, before the altar, so that when the men arrived with Stephen, he could be arranged long and still upon it. The guards all hastened away when they could, for the face of their dead master frightened them, and for that I could not blame them. Stephen’s features were macabre indeed, and had I not believed in my heart that he would awaken with the sun, I could not have borne to be near him.

I arranged his limbs there as well as I could, closing his eyes with ginger fingers and crossing his arms to keep him in balance upon the base of the narrow box. From a lump of coal I had in my pocket, I smudged his lower lip in one place to mimic the boil and rot of sickness. After a time the manor priest entered, having been alerted to his master’s death, and with tears in his eyes the kindly man prepared to recite mass upon mass to speed young Stephen’s path to heaven.

When all this was readied and the mass under way, I took a deep breath, for the moment of my final performance had come. With a nervous heart I turned down hall and up passage, tracing my steps to my lady’s chamber, and entered there as softly as a serpent. She was not sleeping, she was awake, and as I had suspected, she was eager to see me.

“Ah, Kate, there you are. Come, my dear, and tell me, did you have any trouble?”

I suspected what she really asked was whether I’d seen any signs of poisoning about the body, any mark or darkening that might implicate her in the death. And, in my accustomed way, I had prepared a lie for her.

“I had no trouble with the body,” I whispered, kneeling close to her, “but I saw a black mark beginning to show about the lips, which made me worry. I think it might be best for us all if we hasten Stephen into the ground. He ought not be out past the morning.”

“Nay, I agree,” she whispered in return, oddly calmer now than she’d been at any moment in the months past. “He must be buried this very night. Will you see to it, my loyal Kate?”

I nodded my head, remembering, then, that I ought to be wearing my sour face. But I needn’t have worried. Lady Pernelle sat in such a daze, I scarcely believe she saw me at all.

“He is prepared, below in the chapel, if you wish to pay your respects now, my lady,” I hissed in her ear.

“Very well,” she nodded, humming softly to herself as she gathered her wrap against the chill of the halls. “Was it difficult to lay him out?” she asked, though whether she queried from curiosity or from a wish of making conversation, I could not tell. I feared she was thinking strange morbid thoughts, and this frightened me, but I did as I had planned to do and lowered my head in a sorrowful way.

“Sadly, my lady, ’tis a task I’ve managed a time or two before, so it was no great issue for me.”

She clucked at this and laughed a little, then followed my back to the tiny chapel where the priest was waving his censor of incense, a scent that reminded me, as always, of my wedding with Hugh. Lady Pernelle snapped at the priest as she entered, calling on him to tell how many masses he intended to speak for the boy that night.

“Nine, my lady,” he answered, shaking.

“Speak no more than six this night,” she declared, her eyes fixed on Stephen’s cold form. “You may repeat the final three in the daylight, but we fear my boy died of something strange and think it best to bury him quickly.”

The priest nodded dumbly at her instructions and went on with his current mass, only quietly and with far less activity.

“Oh, my son, my Stephen!” came a cry from Lady Pernelle, as she reached out to touch Stephen’s white hand. “What wretched sickness has taken you from me, just as you broached the age of manhood? My darling boy, my cherished one, how can the heavens be so cruel?”

I saw the priest’s smooth forehead crinkle at these words, but he said nothing beyond his Latin. Soon enough he turned away, and I alone watched Lady Pernelle perform her act, weeping and wailing over the body, forming each word with more conviction than the one before. I wondered, truly, if she might soon bring herself to believe that an illness had taken Stephen from her, for the more she spoke of it the more fixed it seemed to be in her mind. But as I heard her call him “darling boy,” I recalled how she had said the same of Hugh and knew I could let no sympathy for her enter my heart. She had murdered her sons in devious succession and therefore deserved the worst I could do for her.

L
ADY
P
ERNELLE REMAINED
near Stephen’s body for the length of two masses, and when at last she turned to go, echoing her final cries to God and the night, I stifled a yawn from the late hour. The lady herself seemed weary as well, and she leaned on me heavily as we ascended the steps to her own chamber.

“Ah, Kate,” she said, seeming calm again after all her tears. “I do not know how I shall bear to face the day tomorrow, now that my boy is no longer. What shall I do? Where shall I find my solace now?”

I was too tired to laugh at this, though I found it amusing, but I straightened my face and turned to her.

“My lady, if I might make a small suggestion, would you not feel greater comfort if Sir Thomas came to stay at the manor? He is always such a boost to your spirits, I’m sure he would be quite a help to you now. If you like, my lady, I could send for him, after you retire to your bed, so that he might be expected to arrive as early as tomorrow.”

She nodded slowly at my words, for this thought seemed to suit her well. “Yes, Kate, do send for him. I should like to lay my head on his shoulder at a time like this.”

At length we reached her chamber door, and I led her forward to her own bed and helped her slip herself within it.

“Kate,” she whispered as I tidied the room, “you will see to it that he’s buried tonight?”

She looked, for a moment, as weak as a child, and I gazed at her with a puzzled heart. “I shall, my lady, do not fear. All is prepared, I need only wait for the end of the masses to have it done.”

“Thank you, my loyal Kate, thank you. Ah, Kate,” she murmured, her eyes falling heavily, “you have been like a daughter to me.”

I froze at these words, for they forced me back to the night I learned of Hugh’s death—she had spoken similar words to me then. I believe she may have felt it too, felt the resonance in her own words and the similarity of our two voices, stretching across the peaks of time, for her eyes fluttered and she glanced at me.

In a flash I performed my sour expression and turned toward her, knowing that to turn away at such a moment would increase her suspicion. She gazed at me long and hard, but at last allowed her eyes to close, and I slipped out with a thundering heart.

B
ELOW IN THE CHAPEL
the night was quiet. Only the priest’s lulling voice echoed within the chapel walls, for Stephen, alas, seemed eternally silent. I bade the priest wake me when he had done and lowered myself against the stone wall to catch a brief sleep in the faint candlelight. Before two hours or more had passed, he shook my shoulder, lantern raised, and shuffled off to his own bed, happy enough to have done his duty by his young master and hoisted his soul in the proper direction.

Rousing myself to shake off sleep, I dashed to the pantry to root out Clym, for he was waiting as we’d arranged and followed behind now without a word. We two made our way to the silent chapel and, without speaking, hefted Stephen from his box and propped him, ghoul-like, against the altar.

His box we righted and lined with stones, each wrapped in soft wool to keep them hushed. Clym had chosen these stones with care and reckoned they weighed near what Stephen did, so when we had finished we wasted no time in placing the lid and sealing the tacks with the sturdy mallet Clym had gathered for me. This done, we wrapped Stephen as best we could in a double grain sack, taking care to rent small tears near his mouth so he might breathe air instead of wheat flour. We then lifted Stephen, an awkward load, and towed him as far as the unmanned stable on the dark side of the manor in which Clym had prepared a horse.

While Clym remained there to pack up our steed, I hastened to the yard, stumbling against the wind and the night, drawn like a moth to the grave diggers’ lantern. They had finished their hole, and I led them away from its yawning darkness to the softly lit chapel and Stephen’s pine box. The men bore it off with anxious hands, for my words about sickness had caused them great fear, but as long as they bore it, I cared not what their attitude was. Once they were gone I blew out the candles one by one until thick darkness filled the chapel. Then I followed with careful steps, leaving this place, perhaps forever.

I
WATCHED
with the lantern raised high in the night until I was certain that Stephen’s coffin was firmly tamped down under yards of earth, then I left the men to finish their work, to smooth the dirt and mark the place for their master’s headstone. I had no time to waste with them, for the night stars had spun too far already, and my road lay long before me.