Passion's Exile (37 page)

There was no choice. The answer stood before him, frowning in wounded frustration, trying to conceal her pain behind a mask of rage. Curse his soul, he’d hurt her enough.

“Rosamund,” he decided, taking her gently by the shoulders, “go to the nunnery.” She bit her lip and was on the verge of furious tears when he cupped her face in one hand and said, “Wait for me there. If I’m able, I’ll come for ye by Lammastide.”

The wind abruptly went out of the sails of her anger, leaving her blinking in confusion. She searched his eyes. “Ye will?”

“If I’m able,” he repeated. The odds were against him. He knew that. But if he didn’t try…

“Lammastide?” she croaked. Three months probably sounded like an eternity to Rose.

“If I don’t return…”

“Ye will,” she said, smiling now through her tears. “I
know
ye will.”

He swallowed hard. Her innocent faith was hard to endure. “If I’m not back by Lammas…then take a husband or take the veil.”

For Rose, three months passed on the back of a snail. One day was much the same as the next at the convent—nuns in drab habits murmuring along the passageways, gathering for the sumptuous Sabbath meal of ubiquitous bread and broth, prostrating themselves before the altar, not so much to worship, Rose suspected, but to sleep after rising at such an unholy hour.

The only interruption in the dull routine was when her foster parents visited. They brought news of her stepfather’s death and her betrothed’s mysterious disappearance, which had thrown Rose’s mother into a rage. Rose was relieved that Gawter’s body hadn’t been found, and apparently, a neighboring nobleman had made an offer on Averlaigh, so Rose’s mother, deeply in debt and furious with Rose’s decision to join a religious order, had sold her property and moved herself into a modest home in Stirling.

But none of that concerned Rose. What consumed her was the fact that today was the first of Lammastide, and Blade hadn’t yet appeared.

Visitors had stopped by the nunnery all day long, bringing Lammas offerings of bread and coin for the poor. Rose had stationed herself at the convent gate to watch them come and go, biting her thumbnail and searching their ranks for the face she dreamt about each night. Still he hadn’t appeared.

Now she paced back and forth through the nunnery’s herb garden with Wink on her arm, unable to resist glancing frequently toward the western road, where the sun continued, against her wishes, to sink lower and lower in the sky.

“Ye’ll see, Wink,” she said with forced cheer, smoothing the feathers over the falcon’s breast with nervous fingers. “He’ll come.”

Wink ruffled her feathers, which had grown back nicely, all but a tiny patch over her blind eye. The bird no longer wore the bandage around her wing. Thanks to the healing skills of one of the nuns, the bone had fused. But Wink couldn’t fly.

As for Rose, the nuns had welcomed her, though ‘twas clear from the start they didn’t approve of her intrepid ways. In their minds, ‘twas reckless to hoist oneself onto the lower limb of the apple tree to pick fruit. Rose wondered what the nuns would think if they knew she’d scaled towers and battled thieves.

As always, Rose bobbed her arm for Wink, encouraging her to flap. She might not be able to fly, but the bird needed to stretch her wings, for she would founder without exercise.

Rose’s gaze drifted inexorably back to the west. The sun was but an inch from the top of the hills now. She let out a quivery sigh.

“‘Tisn’t so bad here, is it, Wink?” Her voice cracked. “‘Tis…peaceful. Ye have a place in the mews with Sister Mildred’s kestrels, and I have a warm bed. Sister Beatrice keeps hens, so there are plenty of eggs for ye. And I can do just fine on barley broth and oatcakes.”

Three-quarters of an inch.

She gulped. “I won’t have to pray
all
the time. Sister Margaret says even when I’m no longer a novice, I’ll still have an hour or two free in the afternoons. We can stroll through the garden or go down to the sea. Does that sound good to ye?”

Half an inch.

Tears burned in her eyes. She’d been so certain he’d come. So sure that he’d keep his promise.

Now she could see she’d been a fool. He’d never meant to return. He’d only made that vow so she wouldn’t make a fuss about his leaving.

Lady Rosamund of Averlaigh was going to become a nun. She’d already decided against taking a husband. She couldn’t possibly love another the way she had Blade.

She clamped her jaw to still its trembling. Tomorrow she’d take the veil. And from that day forth, she’d be a bride of the church. Thereafter, the days would be woven together like threads on a loom, one into the next, their pattern never changing, until the cloth of her life was complete. Aye, she’d be a nun…a whispering, wan, withered old nun to the end of her days.

Wink’s talons flexed suddenly on Rose’s glove, and she frowned at the bird. But before Rose could prevent the wayward beast, Wink coiled and sprang off of her arm, flapping her wings furiously.

Rose cried out in dismay. She should have leashed the poor falcon. Wink couldn’t fly. Not properly. The reckless bird would get herself killed.

Then Rose looked aloft and slowly lowered her arm in disbelief. Wink wasn’t falling. She wasn’t even faltering. Indeed, she was flying as well as she ever had, high into the heavens, far from the mundane world, wild and joyful and free.

“Wink!” A tear spilled from Rose’s eye as she smiled up at her precious pet. “Oh, Wink!”

Wink circled the old chapel closely at first, cocking her head this way and that, gradually widening the spheres until her flight encompassed the walls of the nunnery. Then, while Rose watched with mixed emotions, she soared off, away from Rose, away from St. Andrews, toward the setting sun.

‘Twas best this way, she supposed. If Rose couldn’t be free, at least Wink deserved to be. Still, her eyes flooded with tears as she watched her precious falcon diminish in the western sky.

Rose’s eyes were so blurred by tears that at first she didn’t see the horsemen descending the far west hillock. Even after she noticed them, she forced her racing heart to calm, bracing herself against false hope.

‘Twasn’t Blade, she chided herself. There were dozens of them. ‘Twas hardly a man coming to claim his bride. Two score, nae, three score knights crested the rise, a veritable army. They were likely a contingent of soldiers stopping in St. Andrews on their march to Edinburgh, then on to the Borders to fight the English.

Still her foolish heart pounded, and she wiped her eyes to better see who approached with such royal bearing.

Yet more soldiers poured over the rise, and she shielded her eyes, squinting against the setting sun to catch a glimpse of the noble knight who rode at their fore.

The lead rider stopped all at once, and Rose’s breath caught. High above him, her wayward bird wheeled and soared in her own heaven, oblivious to the army of dangerous knights below. Then the great knight suddenly raised his gloved hand, and to Rose’s amazement, Wink dove and fluttered down, landing neatly atop the man’s wrist.

“Blade.” Her lips moved, but no sound came out. Her throat was too thick with tears.

Mother Ellen would have scolded her soundly for picking up her skirts, clambering over the garden wall, and tearing off across the countryside like a heathen. But Rose didn’t care.

Her beloved felon had arrived as he’d promised—his honor restored, his heart healed, and his arms wide open—and Rose felt as free as a falcon.

No pilgrim’s tale could be complete without a final accounting of the personages who shared the journey.

Because ‘twas his last pilgrimage, Father Peter set in his own hand the account of what befell the company afterward. Since the beloved priest, God rest him, was long of wind and short on truth, I have taken the liberty of making brief what was once unwieldy, and—may the Lord pardon me—strained what truth I could from his elaborate history.

The Father settled peacefully within the walls of a monastery near St. Andrews, where he spent as many hours regaling wide-eyed novices with his adventures as he did in prayer.

Simon the palmer continued to make a lucrative, if brief, business of traveling on pilgrimage and selling relics. Within a year, the old palmer contracted a wasting sickness and died. As a matter of note, his bones were later exhumed and sold by another enterprising palmer as those of Saint Swithin.

Drogo the cook and Fulk the butcher, having learned something of the value of a good wife, made their amends at St. Andrews and returned to their respective homes, where they were showered with greetings from their pining women, who had learned the value of a good husband. They eventually ended up in the employ of the same laird, where the resplendent feast they prepared for visiting royalty in 1406 became the stuff of legend.

Jacob the goldsmith returned home to discover that his wife had run off with his apprentice. Hoping for consolation, he sent Brigit the widow a costly jeweled girdle, inquiring if she might consider renewing their acquaintance.

Brigit, in a pique of ire over Jacob’s philandering ways, and having successfully caught the eye of a brawny cooper with nine children, no wife, and an appetite for good beer, thought it a grand jest to send the thing to Lettie.

Lettie, meanwhile, greatly influenced by her visit to the holy cathedral at St. Andrews, had repented of her lustful ways and her wandering eye. When she returned home, ‘twas to renew her vows to her husband and become a dutiful wife. Thus, upon receipt of the goldsmith’s trinket, she had it melted down and made into a belt of gold links for her husband.

The tanners, Ivo and Odo, continued much as they had since they were young lads, drinking and making merry till they grew old and their hides were as tough as their wares.

Ian Campbell the soldier found at long last the redemption he sought at St. Andrews, just as Rose foretold. Standing before the holy shrine, he received a vision that told him to go forth unto all the lands where he’d slaughtered the innocent and make repair. So, buckling on his armor, and with the lad Guillot as his squire, he became a knight-errant, rescuing damsels, aiding the poor, and righting wrong wherever he could. Eventually he became known as Ian the Good.

Tildy, intimidated by the variety and quality of woven goods available at St. Andrews, reported to her Highland kinsmen instead that the Lowland woolens there were far inferior, and they’d do well to make their purchases on northern soil.

While in St. Andrews, the three scholars, Thomas, Bryan, and Daniel, made the acquaintance of a trio of sisters, daughters of a Master of Logic who was hoping to help form the first university in Scotland. The lads and lasses fell hopelessly in love, if one may consider a lifelong passionate debate between six persons of fiercely independent opinion, love.

Mary, the miller’s daughter who disguised herself as a nun, decided, after a sound thrashing by her father and a stern lecture from her mother, ‘twas best to avoid entanglements with the nobility. She took over the inn when her parents grew feeble with age, feeding and lodging and cleaning up after the nobles who passed by, but never again did she let her heart become ensnared by their ilk.

Ivy—Archibald of Laichloan—was accompanied home by Wilham, who afforded the boy no comfort along the way. Indeed, he threatened to make the lad wear his nun’s habit all the way to the gates of Laichloan and only spared him when the boy burst into tears at the thought. Laird John was suitably relieved at his heir’s return, Wilham was handsomely rewarded, and once Archibald laid eyes on his breathtakingly lovely fifteen-year-old betrothed, he wondered what madness had driven him to take up with the miller’s daughter.

Wilham’s reward was the property of Averlaigh, which he’d purchased from Rose’s mother with the coin he’d earned for the return of Archibald. True to Blade’s predictions, a bevy of willing lasses awaited Wilham’s return, and ‘twasn’t long before he chose from among them a flower of uncommon grace and kindness who believed the sun rose and set upon his shoulder and laughed in delight at his every jest.

And as for Pierce and Rosamund of Mirkhaugh, they lived a long and happy life filled with adventure and romance. Their mews became renowned for its fine strain of kestrels, many of them the progeny of Wink, and the hills surrounding Mirkhaugh were never without some stray child with black locks and skinned elbows, climbing trees, flying falcons, and getting into mischief. Somehow the precious whelps all managed to make it home at day’s end whenever their father’s friend Wilham came to visit, for he never tired of regaling them with lusty tales of adventure. They listened eagerly as he recounted the tournament where their father had jousted with the de Wares and told the story about their mother taming a bear in St. Andrews.

But their favorite tale, the one he never tired of telling, was always the legend of how their mother and father met, battled thieves, survived a kidnapping, prevented a murder, and fell in love—the romance of Blade and his Rose.