Silken Threads (20 page)

“Fried fig pasties,” offered a young woman,
Margaret, striding up to them with a younger girl
—
a baby,
really
—
in her arms.

Robert presented Margaret and little Beatrix
to Hugh and his sister. The lady Margaret was much as Hugh
remembered her from their youth
—
comely and pink-cheeked,
with warm hazel eyes. Her modest wool tunic and mantle looked like
something a widow might wear, but her light brown braids were
uncovered; although nearly thirty, she was a maiden, having refused
all offers of marriage.

“You had a fried fig pasty?” Robert asked,
taking Catherine by the chin so he could inspect the shiny film on
her face.

She nodded vigorously.

“May I?” He licked a bit of the sticky
residue off her fat cheek; she shrieked with laughter.
“Mmm...delicious.”

The younger child strained in his direction,
her chubby arms extended. Robert lowered Catherine to the ground
and took the plump little girl from his cousin. His gaze lit on
Margaret’s mouth, and he smiled. “You enjoyed the pasty, too, I
see.” Settling Beatrix on his hip, he reached out and wiped his
thumb just below his cousin’s lower lip. Margaret met his gaze, the
pink in her cheeks heating up. They both quickly looked away.

Joanna cast Hugh a swift, speculative
look.

“Well!” Hugh clapped his hands together,
forcing a smile. “Who’d like to take in the horse races?”

* * *

“He loves her,” Joanna told Hugh as they
strolled past the canopy-shaded tables laden with goods from
foreign ports...supple leather shoes from Córdoba, indigo from
Jerusalem, glassware from Venice, pelts of sable and ermine and
vair from the Northlands...and everywhere, perfuming the air like
incense, vast arrays of fragrant spices from remote and wondrous
lands.

“He does not love her,” Hugh said.

“Have you been watching them this afternoon?
The little looks and gestures? Look at them. They look like a
family.”

Robert and his cousin wove through the crowd
ahead of them, Beatrix limply asleep on her father’s shoulder,
Catherine sucking listlessly on two fingers as Margaret led her by
the hand. It was midafternoon, and the children were exhausted.

“They can never be a family,” Hugh said,
pausing to admire a display of rare and costly goods from the Far
East
—
carved ebony, pearls, lapis lazuli, ambergris, musk.
“She’s his third cousin.”

“Third cousins marry all the time,” she
said. “So do second cousins.” Although the Church condemned
marriage between people related in the seventh degree or
closer
—
sixth cousins
—
the restriction was widely
overlooked. “Is Robert that devout?”

“His parents are, and Robert is devoted to
them.”

“But if it weren’t for them,” she persisted,
“would Robert have married Margaret?”

Hugh sighed heavily. “They were in love
once
—
a long time ago. They were young. It’s been over for
years.”

Joanna watched Robert guide Margaret to a
table overseen by a brown-skinned infidel selling sugar, wax, ivory
tusks, paper, and various exotic fruits and nuts. Robert rested a
hand on his cousin’s back as he pointed out two little monkeys
chattering away in a cage.

“They live under the same roof,” Joanna
said.

Hugh shrugged. “You live under the same roof
with Graeham.”

Her cheeks stung. “‘Tisn’t the same. The
serjant and I...we would never...”

“And neither would Robert and Margaret. Even
if he were still in love with her, he has too much honor to
compromise her, knowing he could never marry her.”

“Couldn’t he get a papal dispensation?”

“About eleven or twelve years ago, he
petitioned the Roman curia, but they turned him down. He and
Margaret were heartbroken, but they got over it. He allowed his
parents to betroth him to Joan, and he was a good husband to
her.”

“He should have wed Margaret without the
pope’s blessing.”

“He was content with Joan.”

“Some people have the gift of persevering in
the face of adversity,” Joanna said, echoing what Graeham had told
her about herself. “One makes the best of a bad situation. But he
should have married Margaret.”

“Perhaps, but that’s all in the past.” Hugh
took Joanna by the shoulders and bored his gaze into hers. “He
wants to remarry, Joanna. This could be a wonderful opportunity for
you.”

“You told me he’s remarrying because his
children need a mother. But they’ve already got Margaret, and they
seem to adore her
—
as does he. Why should he feel compelled
to replace her with a wife?”

Hugh shrugged. “I don’t know. He is a man,
after all, with a man’s needs. Does it really matter? He wants a
wife, and he seems willing to consider you. He’s a good man, of
noble blood, with an important holding. He’d make you a wonderful
husband. Don’t discourage him just because you fancy he’s still in
love with Margaret. That’s over and done with.”

Up ahead, Robert transferred the sleeping
Beatrix to Margaret’s shoulder and gave some coins to the infidel
merchant, who plucked three oranges from the pile on his table and
handed them over. Stepping back, Robert tossed the oranges into the
air and juggled them as expertly as any jongleur, to the evident
enchantment of his cousin, who rewarded him with laughter and
praise. Catherine chortled sleepily, one arm wrapped around
Margaret’s legs, those two fingers still firmly lodged in her
mouth.

Robert grinned with pride in response to
Margaret’s delight. Never once did he look in Joanna’s
direction.

* * *

Graeham spent the day contemplating his
idiocy while keeping a halfhearted watch on Rolf le Fever’s
house.

Late in the morning, the shutters over the
solar window opened. Graeham sat up in bed, his ribs smarting.
Those shutters had been closed since he’d been there, but it was,
after all, an unusually warm day. The maidservant Aethel stood at
the window, running a rag over the sill as she chatted to
someone
—
her mistress?
—
over her shoulder. She
walked away from the window, and for a short while Graeham saw
nothing but part of the paneled walls and raftered ceiling of the
solar.

Presently Aethel reappeared, shaking her
head and gesturing toward the window. She clasped her hands in
prayerlike supplication, smiling in a pleading way toward the
room’s other occupant. Finally, with an expression of resignation,
she pulled the shutters closed.

Graeham watched and waited, but the solar
window did not reopen. At nones he shuttered the alley window.
Olive arrived at the le Fever house with her tonic and left, after
which he unshuttered the window, needing all the fresh air he could
get in this heat.

Eventually he sank back onto his bolster of
pillows and resumed his pitiless self-chastisement, uninterrupted
by human contact, for neither Thomas nor Leoda happened by that
afternoon. More likely than not, Leoda was plying her trade at the
Friday fair. Graeham smiled, recalling how he and the other boys
used to linger at the fair until late afternoon, when the whores
began circulating. They were easy to spot, with their painted faces
and brazen dress. The boys would whisper together about the things
these women did for money in the woods nearby. Sometimes the whores
would catch them staring, and wink, or beckon them seductively; the
boys would turn and scatter like mice.

Shortly after St. Mary-le-Bow rang vespers,
the black and white tom cat, Manfrid, jumped onto the alley
window’s deep sill and poked his big head through the bars. He
still did that from time to time, as if hoping that Graeham would
have disappeared. Joanna once mentioned that the storeroom had been
Manfrid’s favorite refuge before Graeham appropriated it.

On seeing him, Manfrid started backing away.
Graeham clicked his tongue and the cat stilled. With slow
movements, Graeham reached out to the tray on the chest and lifted
a bit of cheese. Holding the crumb toward the animal, he clicked
his tongue again.

Manfrid looked at the cheese, then at
Graeham, then again at the cheese. He backed up a step.

Graeham tossed the cheese onto the floor
beneath the window. The cat settled down on the sill and regarded
it for some time with an expression of feline wistfulness. At long
last, he leapt down, sniffed at the morsel, and ate it.

Before Graeham could offer him another one,
he jumped back onto the sill and disappeared into the alley.
Graeham’s disappointment disgusted him. Was he truly so bored and
lonely that he craved the company of that pathetic creature?

The family in the stone house punctuated the
tedium by launching into an especially theatrical row, which
culminated in the son’s furious departure from the house,
accompanied by a slamming door and bellowed epithets.

In the ringing quiet that followed,
Graeham’s thoughts returned to his ill-advised visit from Leoda and
its likely ramifications. By the time the low afternoon shadows
began merging into twilight, he had convinced himself that Joanna
was going to kick him out of her house
—
and who could blame
her?

The more full the cup,
Brother Simon
used to say,
the more carefully one must carry it.
Fortune
had smiled on Graeham when Joanna had consented to let him live
here. But he’d been careless with his bounty, and now he would
surely lose it.

He would let her keep the four shillings, he
decided. It was entirely his fault the situation hadn’t worked out.
Joanna had maintained her end of the bargain
—
and
graciously.

He would miss her.

“Shit.”

“That’s a bad word.”

Graeham turned toward the alley window to
find a small, remarkably grimy face staring at him through the
bars. It was a boy, judging from his tattered red cap, from which
sprouted a few blond wisps. He couldn’t have been more than nine or
ten; only his head showed above the windowsill.

“I suppose it is a bad word,” Graeham
admitted, “but I didn’t realize there was a child lurking about to
overhear.”

The boy’s gaze fell on Graeham’s splinted
leg. “What happened to you?”

Graeham shifted on his cot to face the
child. “I met some bad men.”

His young visitor nodded sagely. “There’s
lots of bad men in London. You’ve got to keep your wits about you.”
Despite his appearance, his speech wasn’t as coarse as that of the
lowest classes.

“Verily. What’s your name, boy?”

“Adam.”

“I’m Graeham Fox.”

“Fox
—
for your hair?”

Graeham smiled. “For my cleverness.”

“‘Tis good to be clever. ‘Tis better to be
clever than to be comely. Me mum always told me so.” A hint of
melancholy shadowed Adam’s expression.

“Your mother,” Graeham said quietly, “is
she...”

“We live over in the Shambles,” Adam said
quickly, peering this way and that through the bars to get a better
look at the storeroom. “Me pa’s a meat butcher. Me mum, too.”

“Ah.” From the boy’s neglected appearance,
Graeham would have taken him for the child of a beggar, or at best
a carter
—
someone of that ilk.

“Is this where you live, then?” Adam
asked.

“For the present.” Perhaps just until Joanna
returned home this afternoon.

“It looks right cozy.”

“It is.”

A noise from the front of the house drew
Graeham’s attention. The door opened and Joanna entered the shop,
along with her brother.

A flash of movement and the soft pat of
footsteps made him turn back to the alley window. Adam was
gone.

Graeham heard whispers from the direction of
the shop. Joanna and Hugh stood very close, conferring together
quietly; Graeham wondered if they were discussing him. Hugh did
most of the talking, while Joanna contemplated something round and
brightly colored that she held in her hand. Hugh’s voice rose; he
said something that sounded like, “It’s a good match, Joanna.”

“Shh!” Joanna looked toward Graeham for the
first time; so did her brother. He led her out to the dusky street
with an arm around her shoulder and continued his mysterious
exhortations. She nodded somewhat grudgingly. He leaned closer and
spoke again, gripping her upper arms. “Yes, all right, I’ll think
about it,” she said, loudly enough for Graeham to hear.

Hugh patted her hair
—
she’d
dispensed with her veil, Graeham saw
—
and kissed her cheek,
and left. Joanna watched him walk away, then reentered the shop,
locking the door behind her. For one weighty moment her gaze met
Graeham’s across the length of the house.

She came toward him, and his heart beat a
little faster, but she merely walked into the salle and placed the
object she’d been holding in the middle of the table. It was an
orange, Graeham saw. There were two tallow candles in iron holders
on the table. She fetched the fire iron and lit them; golden light
swept the early evening dimness from the room.

He took hold of his crutch and hauled
himself to his feet. “Mistress Joanna.”

She looked at him, somewhat apprehensively.
Christ, but she was beautiful today, painfully beautiful. If gold
could tarnish to a slightly darker shade, but keep its brilliant
luster, it would look like her hair. Her gown was the same striking
color, giving her the aspect of a statue cast in bronze, save for
the womanly softness of her face and hands.

Graeham limped to the doorway, gripping its
frame to help support him. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. She
regarded him with such hushed intensity that he had to look down.
“I...violated your hospitality.” Tempted to summon clever words to
mitigate his transgression, he shook his head. “There are no
excuses. I’m sorry.”