The Marsh King's Daughter (26 page)

As she left the church and turned homewards, he was waiting for her, a smile on his face, his beard and hair freshly groomed, and his garments immaculate as always. Miriel greeted him with a smile of her own, albeit a cautious one.

'You are back early,' she said. 'I thought you would still be in Boston.'

He took her hands in his and squeezed them. 'My business was quickly concluded there. I've found an excellent ship's master to carry my wool. Meticulous vessels, never late, and always in profit.' He kissed her cheek. 'You're looking lovely today.'

Miriel thanked him, pleased that he had noticed her appearance. While she might have to wear the plain colours of a widow to respect Gerbert's memory, they were of the finest fabrics and stylishly cut. Today she wore a gown of dark green twill trimmed with green and cream braid and a plain wimple of bleached linen.

'You will stay to dine?' she asked. The question was a formality. Robert had always taken food with Gerbert when in Nottingham and it was a foregone conclusion that he would eat with Gerbert's widow.

Once home, she set Samuel and Elfwen to preparing the meal, and poured wine for herself and Robert. He took his cup outside into the garth with its herb patch and cherry orchard, the fruits now setting on the trees. There was much evidence of new planting and industrious weeding.

'Gerbert never bothered much with the garden after his first wife died,' Miriel said, joining him. 'And I had only just begun to replant when Gerbert was taken. I thought this would be a good way to hold the life in his memory, and I have always liked tending plants.'

For a while they discussed the layout of the flowerbeds, what was to go where, the colours, the perfumes.

Robert gave her a possessive glance that she did not see. 'You were fond of him, weren't you?'

Miriel gazed at a tumble of cream and gold honeysuckle. 'I was,' she murmured, and felt a sudden sting of tears behind her eyes. 'But not as fond as he would have liked. He wanted to be a husband, but I always thought of him in the same way that I thought of my grandfather.'

Robert nodded. 'That is understandable, he was much older than you,' he said gruffly, 'but you were still a good wife to him.'

Miriel shook her head. 'He died because of me.'

'Oh, that is foolish,' Robert said firmly. 'He died because of circumstance, because of another man's wickedness and greed.'

Miriel said nothing, just looked out at the burgeoning garden. The guilt was harder to bear than the sorrow.

'Besides, Nigel of Lincoln has paid for his sins,' Robert added with a shrug and drained his cup.

'What do you mean?'

'He's dead. Robbed on the road by outlaws.' He spoke coldly, without inflection.

Miriel felt the hairs at her nape prickle upright. 'What do you mean "dead". How do you know?'

Robert shrugged. 'I heard it in Boston. News of merchants murdered while about their business always travels fast to others who have to brave the same routes. He was attacked on the Sleaford Road, his purse robbed and his throat cut. Men are travelling together for safety now lest the same should happen to them. Call me pitiless if you wish, but I say it is divine judgement on the man.'

Miriel suddenly felt cold and sick. She staggered to a small arbour bench surrounded by the fragrance of pale pink dog roses and sat down. Nigel had never been her family, indeed she had hated him, but he had been a connection. Now there was nothing. No one to love or hate her, just a yawning void.

'At least you need worry no longer about your past being discovered.' Robert sat down beside her and took her hands in his. 'Jesu, how cold you are. I'm sorry, I did not think you would take it so badly. I thought you would be pleased.'

'Shocked,' Miriel said. 'And it is one thing to wish someone dead, another to have it happen. God's mercy, I cannot believe it is true.'

'Your heart is too tender.' He kissed her brow, put his arm around her shoulders and drew her in close.

Miriel leaned against him as she had done before on the night of Gerbert's death. She felt his solid strength, the steady beat of his heart and drew comfort from him.

Robert was a shrewd and patient man. Even though he could have risked pressing his advantage, he did not. The time, he judged, was ripe, but not quite at hand. And so he waited until she had command of herself again, and then he took his leave, saying he had a small matter of business to attend to and promising to return later to eat with her.

Miriel opened the door to him herself. Outwardly she was composed, but the facade of her immaculate appearance concealed a vulnerable desolation. She had cursed her family and her family was dead. She had fought them and now there was no one to fight except herself.

A fixed smile on her face, she stepped aside so that Robert could enter. He inhaled the aroma of pork simmering in the cauldron with appreciation and nodded pleasantly to Elfwen and Samuel.

'That sea-captain I mentioned earlier,' Robert said, 'I asked him to obtain a sleeve dog for me while he was in Flanders.'

'A what?'

'One of these - to keep in your sleeve.' From the depths of his cloak he produced the puppy and placed it in Miriel's startled arms. 'It was the "matter" I had to attend.'

She gasped and almost dropped the little creature in her surprise. It was all ears and tail, the latter of which wagged frantically as it strained toward her, licking the tip of her chin with a furious pink tongue. Laughing in delight, still in shock, Miriel fell in love.

Robert watched her with pleasure. 'His naming is yours. For the past week he has just answered to "pup", and worse when he has fouled in the wrong places.'

'He's beautiful! I don't know what to say!' Standing on tiptoe, she kissed Robert in gratitude, all wariness flown and all darker emotions temporarily forgotten.

'I knew you would like him.' He put his arm around her briefly, squeezed her waist, then tactfully released her and handed his cloak to an expressionless Samuel.

Miriel and Robert dined outside in the garth at a trestle table set up in the shade of the largest apple tree. The sun was hot but benign, and now and again its concentration was broken by a shield of small white clouds. The wine was smooth and potent, the pork stew tender and full flavoured. She fed the puppy slivers of meat from her hand until his little stomach was as tight as a drum and he curled up beneath the bench and went to sleep.

'I shall call him Will,' she announced, glancing from the little animal to the man who had given him to her. 'Short for Willoughby.'

Robert snorted with amusement. 'It is not every man who can claim a dog as his namesake.'

'You will be even more insulted if I say that it was meant to be a compliment,' Miriel teased.

'I am not a man easily insulted, although I warn you, I take strict measures against those who do.'

'Oh dear.' Miriel put her finger to her lips and regarded him with widening eyes. The wine had gone to her head, as had the delight of his gift and the pleasure of the meal, following as they did the disturbing news of her stepfather's violent death. They were props to help her forget.

Robert returned her look, his own index finger slowly circling the rim of his goblet. 'I don't want to take any measures against you,' he said huskily, 'but I do desire very much to tread one - that of the marriage dance.'

'Oh dear,' said Miriel again.

'That is what I thought myself. She is only nine months widowed, I said; she will refuse you. You were Gerbert's godson by marriage and his partner. How could you be thinking of such a thing so soon?' Rising from his side of the trestle, he came round to hers and sat beside her, close now so that she could feel the heat emanating from his body. 'I pride myself that I am a man of reason, but no amount of reasoning or considered thought can put the notion from my head. I want you to wife, Miriel.'

She shook her head, but that only served to increase the wine-lightness. 'Please, say no more,' she implored. 'I am not ready to listen. It is too soon.'

Robert ignored her and took her hands in his. 'Truly it is not as foolish as it seems,' he said persuasively. 'We would each fill the void in the other's life, and our trade would be even stronger for our union. We have too much in common, too much need of each other to let it pass by.' He released her hands, but only to take her by the shoulders. 'I swear I will cherish you for ever; you will not lack for anything, and no one will harm you ever again. Only say yes, Miriel.'

His mouth swooped on hers in a demanding kiss that tasted of wine. Strange sensations played through her body, sucking her in, making her loins molten and tender. When he withdrew, gasping like a man who had run a mile, she followed blindly for a moment, and then drew back herself and looked at him with the eyes of a doe run to ground.

'Say yes,' he repeated through the harshness of his breathing. 'If you have any shred of pity, Miriel, say yes.'

She swallowed, fighting the heady seduction of lust and wine. Wiry golden hair glinted at the throat of his tunic. She could sense and scent the power of his maleness and it reached out to her like a sheet of fire.

Despite the intensity of his persuasion, she might have stood her ground, but there were subtle undercurrents at work and he had probed her vulnerability with skill. He had offered her companionship in her loneliness; he had brought her the gift of faith in the little dog curled up against the bench and, with the skill of a consummate tactician, he had chosen his moment.

Now he left the bench and bent on one knee. 'I am no knight,' he said, 'but you are my lady and always will be, whatever answer you give.'

It was the stuff of dreams. It was what a troubadour would have said as he knelt at the feet of a queen in the hall of courtly love. Perhaps in the distant past, a minstrel had knelt at the feet of Edwin Weaver's virgin daughter and declared the selfsame thing. Whatever its ancestors, the speech, accompanied by the rustle of sun-warmed leaves, reached out and unfastened the last knot of Miriel's resistance.

She reached up to touch Robert's mane of gold and silver hair. 'Then what answer dare I give but yes?' she whispered.

Miriel's second wedding was an echo of the first, but with subtle differences. Since she was scarcely out of mourning and Robert himself was a widower, the marriage celebration was grand, but not boisterous. There was little talk of impropriety. Most folk had regarded Miriel as a good if overly young wife to Gerbert. It was only natural that she should wed again, and Robert Willoughby was an obvious choice. It was true that he was older than Miriel by more than twenty years, but it was much less than the forty that had separated her from Gerbert. Only Alice Leen introduced a sour note to the proceedings by muttering that only a wench who was an utter fool leaped out of the frying pan directly into the fire.

Miriel was not sure that Gerbert would have looked on her remarriage with a kindly eye either. While alive, he had made no secret of the fact that he viewed his partner as a rival for her affections, and Miriel had been scrupulous in her avoidance lest Gerbert's suspicions prove their ground. Now they had. She was Mistress Willoughby, and still not quite sure how it had come about. However, done was done. She had reservations but no regrets.

This time there was no noisy, joyful bedding ceremony. She and Robert departed the wedding feast for Robert's home across the Trent at Briggford. Miriel wore a warm cloak for the evenings were beginning to draw in and there was a nip in the air. She sat pillion on the bay cob, facing sideways to Robert's forward. The strange notion came to her that although they were travelling to the same place, they were facing in different directions, and she shivered.

Once free of the city, they took the path across the broad cow meadows and over the bridge that spanned the river at Briggford. Behind them on its sandstone mount, the castle shone like copper in the last gleams of sunset. Below it, the town was a smudge of thatched and shingled roofs, hazed in the blue smoke of cooking fires. Miriel was tempted to leap from the horse and run back towards the comfort and familiarity. What in God's name was she doing here?

As if attuned to her mood, Robert swivelled in the saddle and covered her hands with one of his. 'You are quiet, sweetheart.'

She forced a smile. 'I'm unaccustomed to riding pillion,' she said lamely.

He searched her face. 'It isn't far now,' he said gently, and his broad fingers squeezed hers. 'Soon be home.'