The Marsh King's Daughter (37 page)

'It is only the stepping from sea to shore,' Miriel said quickly. 'The voyage itself was as smooth as glass.'

'Then I will try her myself next time I have occasion to journey abroad.' Robert extended his hand to Nicholas. 'I must thank you for bringing my most precious cargo home safely.'

Bile burned in Miriel's throat. This was more dreadful than she could ever have imagined. She watched Nicholas with anguished eyes.

'It is my duty,' he answered politely and, without hesitation, shook Robert's hand. She saw that her lover had mastered himself, that, as at Stamford when he had walked jauntily through the town gates, he was playing a role to save both their lives, and playing it well. Miriel stiffened her spine. She would not fail him. When he inclined his head to her and then excused himself, she returned his nod and gave her attention to Robert as if her heart was not breaking inside her.

Robert ate heartily of the mutton ragout and herb griddle cakes that The Ship's landlord set before him and Miriel. The food was delicious, and Robert was cautiously pleased with the world at large.

'Not hungry?' He nodded at the barely touched stew on Miriel's trencher. 'I don't know when I've tasted better.' Reaching over, he speared a chunk of her abandoned mutton on the point of his knife and conveyed it to his mouth.

Miriel looked at the grease shining on his lips and felt nauseated.

Robert continued with his meal, clearly relishing every tender mouthful. 'You have excelled yourself at the Troyes fair,' he said. 'I have never seen such fine cloth, and you managed to sell all of ours.'

Miriel gave him a strained smile and agreed that she was pleased with it. For the moment the art of conversation was beyond her, even in the matter of business upon which she could usually hold forth with vehemence.

Robert sucked on a sliver of bone and fiddled it out of his mouth. 'You have not had a difference of opinion with Nicholas de Caen, have you?' he asked suddenly.

White-hot panic shot through Miriel. Dear God, did Robert suspect something? 'No, of course not. What makes you say that?' Her voice was swift and breathless.

'It was just an idle thought.' He flicked the thin shard on to the floor. 'I sensed that you were not at ease with each other on the wharf; there was a constraint as if you had quarrelled.'

Miriel shook her head and gazed at the food congealing on her trencher. The hammering of her heart was so loud in her ears that she was positive Robert would hear it. 'Not at all,' she murmured.

Robert dipped a sop of bread in his gravy and pushed it into his mouth, then sucked his finger and thumb. 'Indeed, when I think on the matter, it seems to me that you have never been at ease with him.'

Miriel swallowed. Although she had scarcely eaten, it was as if a huge morsel of stew were constricting her throat. 'No one can be at ease with everyone,' she said in a tight voice. 'I admire his seamanship, but . . .'

'But what?' Robert leaned forward, his cup in his hands.

She licked her lips, fighting the nausea. 'But we are too much alike.'

'I wouldn't say that!' Robert snorted.

'I mean that our ambitions have risen out of nothing. We have strong opinions and ideas.'

'I don't see that has any bearing on the matter.'

'We grate together like two stones in a fast-running stream.'

'Well, I have strong opinions and ideas, and they don't grate on you - or perhaps they do?'

Miriel almost shuddered. 'We are the same stone,' she lied.

Robert grunted. 'I suppose I see what you mean,' he said dubiously, as if he was not quite sure but did not want to admit it. 'Best if you sail with Master Wudecoc in future then. I hate to see you in such a downcast humour.'

'Yes, best,' Miriel murmured, feeling utterly trapped and dejected.

He took her to bed and she was pliant beneath his demands. But when he was done and had withdrawn, he heard the shakiness of her breath through the roar of his own, and realised that she was weeping.

'Sweetheart?' Concerned, he touched her shoulder and then her wet face.

She drew another breath, deeper than the others, striving to control herself. 'It is nothing; I'm tired and out of sorts.' Her voice was choked. 'Men do not suffer the same.'

By which he deduced that her monthly bleed was imminent, which would explain many facets of her behaviour. But although he had known her snappish, she had never wept before, and that perturbed him.

'Truly, nothing ails me but a woman's malaise. Go to sleep,' she said, turning on her side away from him.

Frowning, Robert lay on his back and gazed at the hostel's rafters. Something had happened to Miriel of late, something that was beyond his understanding, but only because he did not have sufficient knowledge about what was bothering her. He hated being shut out; he hated the lack of control. Turning his head on the pillow, he gazed at her huddled outline and promised himself that he would find out.

'Aren't you pleased to see me?' Magdalene stood on the deck of the St Maria, her hands on her hips, her head tilted to show the alluring curve of her white throat.

Nicholas scowled at her. The answer was no. 'What are you doing here?' he growled.

'Visiting an old friend.' She came towards him and the heavy scent of rose attar wafted on the air. 'They told me at The Ship that you were in port with your fine new cog. I thought you would take supper and a room, but since it is past twilight and the cauldrons scoured out, I realised I was waiting in vain.' She tilted her head to study him. 'So I came to find you instead.'

'Did it occur to you that I might not desire company?' he said shortly.

'Oh, yes.' There was a wry smile on her lips as she reached his side. In the light swinging from the mast, her long braid shone like a copper rope and her eyes glistened. 'And I know why.'

He sighed. 'Because I'm tired, because The Ship is always full of fat merchants and drinkers and . . .'

'And whores?' she finished for him with a raised eyebrow.

Nicholas swore beneath his breath. 'Magdalene, leave me alone.'

She clicked her tongue in exasperation. 'I came here because I knew you would need me.' Leaving his side, she wandered around the ship, touching this and that with a languid hand. 'Your pride and joy, Nick,' she said, and turned to face him. 'But you don't look very joyful. I have seen condemned men look happier.'

'Perhaps if you were to go away, my mood might lighten,' he said through his teeth.

'I doubt it.' She pointed to the flask of wine in his hand.

'If I were to go away, I think you would drink yourself into a stupor.'

The fact that she was right did not make her presence any more palatable. Nicholas had retired to lick his wounds in private and he wanted no witnesses to his grieving.

Magdalene pursed her lips. Turning on her circuit of the deck, she approached the canvas deck shelter with its cramped sleeping quarters. 'You are not at The Ship because she is,' she said. 'And with her husband. Do not deny it, I am no fool.'

Nicholas took a long drink from the flask and went to lean against the ship's side. It would soon be curfew, the time when all open hearths were banked and covered to prevent outbreaks of fire, but for now, the deepening dusk was beaded with their glow. The church of St Botolf rang out the hour of compline, the sound sweet and melancholy. 'It is no business of yours,' he said tersely.

She returned to his side. 'But it is my business because I care about you,' she contradicted, laying her long white hand upon his. The gold ring that he had given her caught a gleam of lantern-light as she removed the flask from his grasp and took a drink herself.

While his back had been turned she had removed her wimple and circlet. Now her thick copper braids hung unfettered to her waist and made her look as young and fresh as a girl. He thought of Miriel baring her hair at the convent, one moment a nun, the next a startlingly attractive young woman. Then he remembered it shaven from her skull for what the nuns saw as her transgressions. It was too much. The recollection made him thrust away from the side and stride across the deck with the agitation of a trapped animal.

Magdalene watched him with troubled eyes and took another drink of wine for courage. 'You still have me,' she said softly. 'I may not be what you want, I may be a poor second best, but are not a few crumbs of comfort better than nothing to the starving?'

He swung round from his pacing, his fists clenched at his sides. 'I am not that hungry,' he said brutally out of his own pain. He felt a stab of satisfaction followed by acute self-disgust as Magdalene flinched.

'No,' she whispered with brimming eyes, 'but I am, and I see that I am a greater fool than you.' Casting the flask to the deck, she gathered her skirts and ran.

Nicholas stared at the wine, puddling and glimmering in the lantern-light, spilling towards him like blood from the neck of the flask. 'Christ Jesu,' he groaned and, from utter stillness, broke into a run. 'Magdalene, no, come back!'

She had been hampered by the fullness of her skirts and he caught her at the foot of the gangplank. Sobbing with fury and humiliation, she fought him, but although she bit and scratched and kicked, it was without the full wildness that might have won her escape. 'You whoreson, let me go!'

'I didn't mean what I said, I just lashed out in anger!' Nicholas panted.

'You did mean it, every word. And why shouldn't you, when I'm nothing but a convenience to be had for payment and then forgotten?' Her tone scalded him.

'Magdalene, that's not true.' Bloody and bruised for his pains, heaving with exertion, he finally succeeded in pinning her within his arms. 'You're a damned inconvenience, and how I can forget you when you dog my every footstep is beyond me.'

She glared up at him, and began to struggle again, but his mouth covered hers and they kissed, with heat, with rage, with need and despair.

'If we are to be fools, then we might as well be fools together,' Nicholas gasped as they broke apart. 'I am sorry for what I said, and you are right, I do need you. Stay with me tonight. Be my talisman against the world.' Taking Magdalene's hand in his own scratched one, he kissed her palm.

She made a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob and, unresisting, followed him back aboard the St Maria/Miriel.

In the night Nicholas awoke and for a moment imagined that he was at sea and his pallet was occupied by Miriel's sweet naked warmth. As he came to his senses, he realised that the gentle rocking was only the cog at her moorings, and the heavy warmth numbing his arm, the cool spill of hair on his shoulder, belonged to Magdalene. His imagination had built a dream out of the flawed reality. But then it was only flawed if he allowed it to be so. Gently, with great sadness, he stroked Magdalene's silky hair and tried not to think of Miriel.

In the morning, the barges were loaded with their cargo of cloth for transport to Lincoln. Robert stood in close scrutiny, conducting operations, and Miriel stood with him, her face puffy and wan from lack of sleep. Robert had told her that he was summoning a physician the moment they returned to Lincoln. He was sure that her humours were unbalanced and he did not want her to end up suffering from an excess of yellow bile like his second wife and die of a wasting melancholy.

Exhausted though she was, Miriel could not wait to be on her way home. With Nicholas in port, the temptation to look upon him for one last moment ate at her vitals. Her eyes flickered across the water to the jetty in mid-river, hoping and dreading to see his lean figure at the gunwale.

'Ready, wife?' Robert took her arm in a solicitous grip as if she needed holding up.

She found a smile and a nod. Across the water, a figure moved on the deck of the St Maria/Miriel. Narrowing her eyes, Miriel stared, unable to help herself. So did Robert. And then he spluttered with amusement.

'The randy dog!' he chuckled.

Leaning over the rail, studying the bustle on the main wharfside, was a woman, her waist-length red hair lifting like a banner in the breeze. A bedsheet was wrapped around her otherwise naked body. Clutching the linen to her cleavage, she raised the other hand to sweep that glorious hair out of her eyes in a gesture both confident and sensual.

Miriel's stomach heaved with an excess of the bile about which Robert was so concerned. Nicholas had not even allowed their love-bed to cool before he took another woman into that narrow, intimate space. A vast surge of grief and rage assaulted Miriel. How could he do this? How could she have been so blind?

Behind the vision that Magdalene made now, Miriel saw an older one of the whore sitting sleep-tousled among the rumpled sheets at The Angel in Lincoln. She remembered how the woman had brushed her hand possessively over Nicholas's crotch and given him a look of intimate amusement. Perhaps Magdalene was the true owner of Nicholas's heart, and herself a pale usurper. Perhaps Nicholas had seduced her in revenge for the stealing of Empress Mathilda's regalia. Yet surely no man could look and act as he had on that voyage in a spirit of deceit?

Staring across the water as Magdalene turned from the cog's side and disappeared, Miriel grimaced to herself. Had not her own father deceived her mother with sweetness and promises, then abandoned her to face the world and the consequences of trusting too deeply?