The Marsh King's Daughter (16 page)
'You are very wise, my dear,' said Gerbert when he came on one of his regular visits, not so much to collect rent as to enjoy the company denied to his younger peers. 'They pursue you out of lust for your possessions and your body.' His skin flushed darkly as he pronounced the opinion.
Miriel was amused if a little irritated by his concern for her welfare. She sensed that his indignation on her behalf would have been considerably less had she been longer in the tooth.
'They will just have to lust, for I have no intention to remarry,' she said lightly as she delved in the basket of evergreen bought in the market that morning. Christmas was on the threshold. In her grandfather's house they had always celebrated the season with holly, ivy and fir, a huge yule log garnishing the hearth.
'Hold this.' She gave Gerbert a swath of ivy. Taking a small hammer and a hobnail, she pinned the foliage to the wall. The wool merchant reminded her in a way of her grandfather, being of a similar age, with the same soft white beard and rotund girth. He saw the world through an old man's eyes as her grandfather had done, was finicky and pedantic, and given to liking his own way. But Gerbert was less cynical than her grandfather, and his character had an eager, child-like quality that Miriel found endearing.
Following the embarrassment of their first meeting, their relationship had progressed on a steadier footing. Gerbert had presented her with a flagon of wine and an apology. Miriel had accepted graciously, agreeing that they would start afresh. Now Gerbert visited her at least once a fortnight to ensure that everything was in order, and usually he would bring a small gift - some wine, a box of spice, wax candles.
Miriel was not blind to his motives. The trick was to keep him friendly but at arm's length. It was a delicate juggling act that took all the skills she had developed over the years with her grandfather.
He stood back to view the effect of the evergreen. 'But surely you are too young to remain a widow the rest of your life?'
Miriel shrugged. 'Why should I not?' She made a few small tweaks of adjustment to the decoration. 'What is there to be gained from marrying again except a big belly and a husband who will dispose of my wealth in one gulp and make me his chattel?'
Gerbert's stare was so comical that Miriel had to suppress a giggle. She knew that her forthrightness unsettled him. He often told her that he could not understand how someone so young and gently bred could talk as plainly as a soldier in a tavern. But it didn't stop him coming back for more.
'You must have a very sour view of marriage to speak thus,' he said gruffly. 'Do I assume that you were unhappy with your husband?'
Now it was Miriel's turn to stare while she sifted through things she had told him on previous occasions and hoped that she would not contradict herself. 'That is my business,' she said primly.
'Very well then.' Gerbert rumpled his hair and shuffled his feet. He cleared his throat and looked at her under his brows like a dog begging a morsel. 'If you have no other plans, mayhap you would care to spend the Christmas feast in my household instead of dining alone.'
Miriel shook her head. 'That would not be—'
Gerbert raised his hand. 'L-lest you think I am being f-forward, we will not b-be alone,' he said, stumbling over his words in his haste to assure her of his honest intentions. 'It is to be a gathering of friends and acquaintances - other m-merchants and their wives. My god-daughter and her husband will be there too.'
Despite herself, Miriel's lips twitched at the earnestness of his expression. 'No hungry bachelors then?'
'Heaven forfend!' He scowled, not in the least amused.
The twitch of Miriel's lips became a full smile. 'Then, on that condition, I accept.'
The day of the Christmas feast arrived and Miriel dressed with care in the blue-grey gown that had once belonged to the sheriff's wife. She had concealed the cinder burn with a scrollwork of embroidery and had stitched a new trim of silvery silk on the sleeves and hem, thereby making the dress individually her own.
She covered her head with a wimple of sombre grey linen, secured by a band of twisted silver wire. Miriel had never explained her shorn hair to Gerbert, only hinted that it was a deeply private matter. She knew that he must be curious, but he had never stepped over the line to ask and she certainly was not going to encourage him. The sooner her cropped locks grew back into a full, shining braid, the better.
Donning her winter cloak with its cosy sheepskin lining, she secured the circular pin and set off up the hill towards St Mary's Gate. Gerbert's house stood on the brow of the hill close to the church. It was a fine, large dwelling built in the time of the second Henry, with a wood shingle roof and storage barn facing inwards to a small courtyard and a stable cut out of the rock.
The oak door with its ornate wrought-iron work and griffin's head knocker was opened to Miriel by Gerbert's servant, Samuel. Bowing, he ushered her into the spacious main room and took her cloak. A long trestle table covered in a cloth of shimmering red damask stood at one side of the hearth. The limed walls were brightened with colourful embroideries and from the rafters hung brass lamps, their soft light smudging the room with warm gold. Astringent scents of pine and juniper mingled pleasantly with the domestic aromas of fire, smoke and mouth-watering wafts of roasting meat.
The other guests were already seated at the trestle, talking and laughing like old friends. As Miriel hesitated, Gerbert rose from his place at the head of the table and, exclaiming in welcome, beckoned her to an empty chair at his right-hand side.
Not without a little misgiving, Miriel advanced upon the gathering. Gerbert kissed her cheek and bade her be seated, pleasure shining in his eyes as he introduced her proudly to his guests. Murmuring polite responses, smiling fixedly, Miriel wondered if they were all assessing her, marking Gerbert for a fool and herself a mercenary bitch with an eye to his wealth.
There was a wine merchant and his plump wife whose every finger was adorned in heavy gold rings, proclaiming her husband's wealth. Beside them, accompanied by both wife and motherin-law, was a stone carver whose alabaster effigies were sought after throughout
The final guest at the table was a handsome man of middle years. His wiry blond hair had the merest salting of white at temple and nape and his greenish eyes were seamed with attractive creases at the corners. Gerbert introduced him to Miriel as 'Robert Willoughby. My god-daughter's husband and heir to my trade.'
Robert Willoughby smiled at the introduction and inclined his head to Miriel. 'But not its inheritor for many years yet, I hope,' he said gracefully.
Gerbert snorted. 'Watch him, lass. His smooth tongue's his finest asset.' He spoke in jest but there was an edge to his words.
Willoughby
shot the older man an amused glance. 'The finest of many assets,' he answered lightly.
'Modesty not being one of them.' Gerbert looked slightly irritated. 'It is a great pity your wife could not attend the feast today. I haven't seen her since Michaelmas.'
The humour left Robert's gaze. 'But for an ague, Juetta would be here. You know how much she loves your Christmas gathering.' He bowed to Miriel. 'I know she would have enjoyed meeting you, Mistress Stamford.'
'And I her,' Miriel said politely. 'Perhaps another time.'
'I am sure that could be arranged.' Robert's smile dazzled out, causing Gerbert to frown.
Over roasted squabs in green herb sauce accompanied by spiced frumenty and apples stuffed with dates and breadcrumbs, Gerbert silently fumed while Robert Willoughby talked of the wool trade upon which he and Gerbert had built their prosperity. 'We contract for fleeces from manors and abbeys, and sell them on, some to Flemish merchants, some to town weavers like Alice here to make homespun yarn and cloth.' The wry humour flashed again. 'We go wool-gathering, so to speak.'
Mellowed by the excellent wine, Miriel's caution slipped. 'I know the wool trade well,' she said. 'I come from a family of master weavers, and my grandfather used to select and buy our own fleeces.'
'Indeed?' Robert leaned on his elbows and gave her his full attention. 'So which, in your opinion, are the best sheep to use?'
'Well, that would depend on whether you are intending to full your cloth or not. If you are, then you need a short wool sheep, and fleeces from ewes rather than rams. If not, then Lincolnshire sheep are the best.'
Robert listened and nodded. So did Alice Leen, her dour expression brightening with curiosity and challenge. 'I buy Leicester fleeces myself,' she said.
'That too is good wool,' Miriel replied diplomatically. But it was not of the superlative quality that her grandfather had insisted upon.
Alice
asked her some hard and pertinent questions about the weaving process. Feeling as if she was on trial, and a little resentful, Miriel answered with opinion and spirit. Respect grew in Alice's eyes and the drawstring line of her mouth relaxed somewhat. 'You still have a deal to learn, young woman,' she said sternly. 'Some things can only be gained by experience.'
'Of which I hope to gain more,' Miriel replied with a tactful smile.
'You did not mention to me that you had connections with the wool trade,' Gerbert muttered in a disgruntled tone. He had invited her to this feast because he wanted to show her off to his colleagues and friends, to introduce her into their society so that she would become a part of it. He had not expected matters to develop so quickly, particularly her rapport with his handsome partner.
Miriel raised her brows at his tone. 'You never asked me, and it never cropped up in our conversations.'
Gerbert tried to smile, but the result was weak. 'I wonder what other gems of experience you're keeping to surprise me.' The remark was supposed to be light, but a weight of possessiveness dragged it down and caused a moment's awkward silence.
Miriel looked at him. She could feel a blush rising to heat her face. 'Think how dull life would be without surprises.'
'Mayhap, but there is also comfort in routine, and much to be said for it.'
'It depends upon the routine,' Miriel murmured, thinking of the daily grind at St Catherine's.
Gerbert compressed his lips and retreated, but Miriel could still feel the weight of his disapproval. Soon after that, the guests began to depart. Alice Leen invited Miriel to visit her workshop below the castle rock, and Miriel was surprised to find herself accepting with alacrity. Robert Willoughby took his own leave by kissing Miriel's hand after the manner of a courtier.
'I meant what I said. You must come and meet Juetta.'
'I will look forward to it,' Miriel answered warmly.
When it was her turn to go, Gerbert caught her sleeve M she was thanking him for his hospitality.
'Have a care where Master Willoughby is concerned,' he muttered. 'I am not sure that his intentions towards you are entirely honourable.'
Miriel laughed. 'Master Willoughby might be handsome and eloquent of speech, but I am no foolish maiden to let such things bedazzle me.'
Gerbert gave a wriggle of embarrassment. 'It is just that I would not see him take advantage of you. It shames me that you should have been pursued when I promised you a haven at my table.'
'He took no advantage,' Miriel said, a little impatient now. 'I enjoyed our conversation and now he has gone home to his wife.' She stepped firmly over the threshold into the biting air. Behind her the draper and his family were waiting to bid their farewells. Gerbert could not continue to remonstrate without seeming to make a fuss.
'Aye, well, take heed of my advice, mistress,' he said as he bowed her on her way.
Miriel responded with a curtsey and a smile but no undertaking that she would do so.
A bitter winter progressed by slow stages into a late, rain-washed spring, and then blossomed into a glorious early summer. Miriel's hair reached her jawline and when she combed it at night, she could see in her silver-backed hand mirror that it was long enough to shimmer if she tossed her head.
Life was good and improving, almost as if the length of her hair was the yardstick by which she measured her fortunes. She used some of King John's silver to buy thirty Lincolnshire ewes and a fine Lindsey ram, individually choosing each sheep for the quality of its fleece. They grazed on rich meadow pasture across the Trent which she rented from the Lord of Briggford, and she employed a shepherd to tend them. Gerbert offered to buy their wool come shearing time, but Miriel put him off. Flanders was crying out for good English fleeces. She knew that she could turn a tidy profit if she sold them on but her intention was to make her own cloth.
Visits to Alice Leen's weaving sheds filled her with nostalgia. Walking between the tall, upright looms, her fingers twitched with the need to handle a shuttle, to feel again the prickly yarn as she wove it between the warp threads and beat it down with a comb. To see the pattern emerge, diamond twill, striped tabby, three-shed twill. When asked, Alice grudgingly gave Miriel permission to weave a row. Although the old woman had merely grunted and folded her arms at Miriel's effort, a steady respect, if not friendship, had sprung from that moment. Recently Alice had offered Miriel the use of a loom in her workshop and Miriel had accepted with delight. It didn't matter that it was Alice's oldest upright piece and not a patch on the magnificent Flemish broadloom to which Miriel was accustomed in Lincoln. It was a start and she intended to make it worth while. Now all she needed was the wool from her sheep.
Gerbert continued to visit Miriel regularly. She was polite but distant with him, making it clear that while she appreciated him as her landlord and a man of standing in the community, she would not brook his interference in her life. She declined further invitations to dine with him, hoping that eventually he would take the hint, but if anything his persistence increased, especially when his god-daughter died of a congestion of the lungs on the eve of St Benedict. Gerbert seemed to think that Miriel was going to throw herself incontinently into Robert Willoughby's arms while the poor woman was still warm in her grave.
'And that is ridiculous,' Miriel said with exasperation to Eva Bridlesmith as the two women walked among the stalls of the Weekday market, baskets on their arms. 'I feel sorry for Master Willoughby, nothing more.'
'Aye, poor man.' Eva shook her head. 'It's the second time he's had to bury a wife. I well mind his first one. Died o' the sweating sickness in the year that King John came to the crown. I remember because it was the year I wed my Martin.'
Miriel made a sympathetic sound. After the Christmas feast she had paid a visit to Robert Willoughby and his wife Juetta. The woman had been a pale skeleton, wasted, frail and suffering. It was too late to discover if they had anything in common, if they would have liked each other, but Miriel had felt great pity and discomfort for Juetta Willoughby waiting to die and for Robert watching her ... as he must have watched his first wife too.
'Master Gerbert is only concerned for your welfare, you know,' Eva remarked with a sidelong glance. 'He has ever been one to bluster and worry. Besides,' she added with a mischievous smile, 'he's quite smitten by you.'
Miriel pulled a face. 'I know.' She nudged Eva Bridlesmith crossly. 'And it is no cause for laughter. I respect his years and his honesty as my landlord, but I cannot bear the way that he watches my every move and then lectures me as if I was five years old.' Her voice took on an exasperated note. 'Any woman with eyes in her head can see that Robert Willoughby is handsome. I like him and I feel sorry for him, but that does not mean I am lovesick.'
Eva lifted a large iron frying pan from a stall of similar implements and studied it with a keen eye. 'I would be,' she said. 'Do you think this is big enough?' She turned the pan this way and that.
'Pigswill!' Miriel snapped. 'You and Martin are thicker than two peas in a pottage. Anyway,' she sniffed, 'I'm not you.'
Eva made a non-committal sound. She tapped the base of the pan with her fingertips. Then she said, 'There are many women who would give their eye teeth to be in your position. Gerbert's wealthy. You could marry into a fortune.'
'I don't want a fortune,' Miriel snapped.
'Oh, you have one of your own then?' Eva tucked the frying pan under her arm and prepared to haggle a price with the stallholder.
'I have enough for my needs without yielding my freedom to a man three times my age,' Miriel said through compressed lips. 'I have no need of a man - whatever his age - to make me complete.'
Eva shrugged and shook her head. 'I cannot help thinking that you would make a good abbess,' she jested.
Colour blazed in Miriel's cheeks. She did not know whether to lose her temper or laugh. 'The Church is not for me either,' she replied in a rather choked voice.
'Then what do you want?' There was genuine bafflement in Eva's eyes, for her own idea of fulfilment was keeping the hearth for her husband and their robust brood of children.
'Nothing,' Miriel said tersely, 'except to live as I choose without being pestered to change my ways.'
Eva glanced heavenwards to show that she thought Miriel impossible, but abandoned the subject and settled down with enjoyment to bargain.
Returning home, Miriel decided that in the afternoon she would ride out to visit her small flock. She needed to clear her head of Eva's half-serious teasing and focus on her own plans, which involved Gerbert not one whit. She could make her way in the world without a husband - no matter how rich.
Unbidden, the image of Nicholas de Caen entered her mind: the sea-glint eyes, the dark hair with its hidden burnish of gold, the slanting grin. Her body responded to the image with a treacherous melting, while her emotions drifted from guilt, through longing, to self-irritation. She had made her bed, she would lie in it, and in the end it was better by far to lie with Nicholas's ghost than with Nicholas himself. All the same, she wondered how he was faring and what he was doing with his new wealth. Did he think of her with other than contempt or hatred? She turned from the thought with a shiver. It was a Pandora's box best left well alone.
She rode at anchor, the grey waves of Southampton Water lapping her strakes and a warm spring wind ruffling the canvas of her furled sail. Her high freeboard and stocky build set her apart from the lighter nefs surrounding her. Although she was not as sleek or elegant as her sea-wolf companions, Nicholas was besotted with her.
'What do you think?' asked Rohan de Voss, the master ship-builder who had sailed the cog from her birth place on the banks of the Schelde to her new English home.
Nicholas shook his head, lost for words.
'She sails well - very stable, good, deep draught.' Pride enriched de Voss's heavy Flemish accent. 'We had a squall the first night out and she rode it like a dancer. I have built many fine vessels in my time, but she is the best so far.'
'I can believe that,' Nicholas said huskily and trod up the gangplank and on to her deck. Unlike the lighter nefs with their Scandinavian dragon prows, their sleek, shallow lines and their side rudders, the Pandora was a cog of substantial size, designed to transport cargo in speed and safety. Her hull was short, her sides high, and her rudder centre-lined at the stern. The best vessels and the most experienced boat-builders were found in Holland, Flanders and the Baltic where the cog was extensively used. In
Nicholas prowled the entire length, breadth and depth of his new ship. His father's vessel, the Peronnelle, had been a large nef with an open deck and a keel that cut through the water like a knife. The Pandora would slice the sea with the power of a heavy sword.
'She'll take about a hundred tons in her hold,' Rohan said as Nicholas leaped down into the dark cavity beneath the deck boards. 'Wool, you said you were hoping to carry.'
Nicholas shrugged. 'Wool, wine, whatever pays well for her passage.'
Rohan stroked his beard. 'Sometimes it takes a while for a new ship's master to build custom.'
'Especially one young and untried,' Nicholas said with a smile and a sidelong glance. 'That is what you were going to say?'
Rohan spread his hands, displaying fleshy, work-callused palms. 'You are only right in the young. I know that, as the son of Alain de Caen, you are anything but untried.'
Nicholas turned away to inspect a nailed timber.
Rohan studied him shrewdly. 'My father built the Peronnelle for him. I was sorry to hear that he had died.' He hesitated. 'Even the most seaworthy ship and skilled captain can fall victim to a rogue wave.' He spoke on a slightly rising note as if asking a question.
Nicholas snorted. 'My father fell victim to other men, not the sea,' he said without looking round.
'Pirates, you mean?' Rohan nodded. 'I thought it strange at the time.'
'You could call them that.' Nicholas pushed his way past Rohan and went back up on deck. He breathed deeply of the brackish, grey air and watched a gull settle on top of the mast. The weather had been glass-calm when the Peronnelle had supposedly foundered. No trace of cargo or crew had ever been found; no word or hint had broken a single bubble on the surface.
'Come,' he said abruptly to Rohan, 'let's drink to the Pandora's success.' He headed toward the gangplank. 'Time enough on the morrow to assemble a crew and sail her out.'
Rohan followed him with the rolling gait of a seaman. 'Why Pandora?'
'It's from Greek legend,' Nicholas answered with a sudden narrowing of his eyes. The ship that haunted his dreams still bore the name of Miriel but he had no intention of commemorating such folly in solid wood. After what had happened in Nottingham, he was doing his best to forget the lying vixen. A search had proved fruitless. It was as if she had vanished off the face of the earth - which she could well afford to do with all the wealth at her disposal. His anger and bitterness had made it difficult, but eventually Nicholas had dismissed her as one of life's lessons learned the hard way.
He was well known in the wharf tavern and he and Rohan were quickly shown to a clean trestle and furnished with a pitcher of Gascon wine. An ageing merchant with whom he was on nodding terms acknowledged him from a neighbouring trestle with a raised cup and a smile. His luscious companion, most definitely not his wife, gave Nicholas a bold stare then looked modestly down. Nicholas briefly admired the tilt of her nose, the ripe curve of her lips and the magnificent swell of her bosom. Then he ruthlessly dismissed her from his mind. Ships were far less trouble than women.
