The Marsh King's Daughter (38 page)

'Love, what is wrong? You are as pale as winding sheet!' Robert's voice was full of tender concern.

Miriel was glad of the support of his arm and leaned upon him for a moment. Then she rallied and, with a shake of her head, stood tall. 'Nothing,' she said, forcing a smile. 'The sun was in my eyes for a moment, that is all.' She tugged on his arm. 'We have a journey to travel and no time to tarry — however salacious the sights.' Her eyes were dry and burning and her heart would have broken except that she refused to allow herself to feel. Shut it away; pretend it had never happened. Easy enough when it seemed that it had all been pretence from the start. The hollowness she felt inside was the reality.

Robert grinned. 'You can't blame a man for looking, sweetheart.'

'Not for looking, no,' she answered dully, and walked downriver towards the leading barge. She did not turn round again.

It was sweltering harvest weather. August toiled towards September, growing more swollen with heat as each day built upon the next, heavy, sticky, shimmering. Mopping sun-scorched brows in the relentless blue, the reapers suffered, yet refused to pray for rain until the corn was cut and stacked, the fields gleaned, and the sheep sent in to graze the remains and manure the soil.

In the weaving shed, the heat was stultifying, even with the door propped open on a stone and the shutters thrown wide. There was not a hint of breeze, only the scorching beat of the sun and the overpowering stink of raw wool. Puddled in sweat, the weavers sat at their looms wearing only their braies as they created heavy woollen fabric for a winter season they could hardly imagine.

Miriel could not bear to go near the weaving sheds. She had begun to suffer from a malaise of the stomach that made her sick in the mornings and queasy throughout the rest of the day. If she visited the sheds in the relative cool before the hour of prime, she was still fighting her gorge and by the time the sun had feasted on the wooden roof shingles for a couple of hours, the heat and the smell turned her settling stomach upside down again.

The most she could do was sit in the shade of the apple garth with the women who spun the raw wool into yarn, and wind the thread off the distaff ready to be woven. Although she said nothing to anyone, Miriel was terrified that God had punished her adultery by visiting on her a mortal sickness. She could not eat; she was nauseous all the time, and so tired that it was only her stubborn will that dragged her out of bed every morning to go through the motions of running her business.

The physician whom Robert had brought to see her almost two months ago on their return from Boston had said she was suffering from an excess of melancholic humours and had prescribed daily doses of parsley leaves and grated ginger steeped in hot wine to restore her balance. The ginger did indeed settle her stomach for a time, but the symptoms always returned, and the lethargy had worsened as August burgeoned until it seemed that the days would split asunder like seeds bursting from an overripe pod.

Robert-had been absent almost the entire month, woolgathering, sweetening his clients, building his business. She was glad that he was away. The bed was hers alone. She could push her limbs into the corners and draw the coolness from the crisp linen, and when it was gone, she could lie naked on the counterpane and know that her body was not in danger of assault from the grunting forge heat of her husband's. She had time to indulge in mourning, to wallow in self-pity over her affair with Nicholas and wonder how she could have been such a fool. Her thoughts became a part of her physical condition, adding to the weight of her misery until she felt as if she were carrying a lead weight in her belly.

In the convent of St Catherine's-in-the-Marsh, Robert sat in the Abbess's private rooms. The fine hangings on the walls and the quality of the wine in his silver goblet surprised him not one whit. The abbey had prospered on the backs of its large herd of longwool sheep whose fleeces were avidly sought by weavers from Lincoln to Florence. St Catherine's had begun selling its clip to Gerbert in the year he had married Miriel. Following his death the abbey had traded with Robert, but last year the Abbess had changed allegiance and contracted to sell her fleeces to Maurice de la Pole.

'He offered me eighteen marks a sack,' said Mother Hillary defensively. 'You were only giving me fifteen. I have to look to the prosperity of the abbey.'

'Of course you do.' Robert took a drink of his wine. 'And three marks per sack is no sum to overlook, even in the interests of loyalty to your usual buyer.' He waved his hand to show that he was not censuring her. 'It is quite understandable, Reverend Mother. In your situation I would have done the same.'

She gave him a severe look. 'May I remind you that Master Woolman's contract to buy was transferred to you on his death, but only for that one year. That does not make you my usual buyer or convey an obligation of loyalty.' She reached out to stroke the fur of a moth-eaten grey cat that was curled in dribbly sleep on the table between them. 'Even so,' she added, 'I am not indisposed to deal with you now, depending, of course, on how much you are prepared to offer.'

The old nun might look as ancient as her cat, but her wits were still intact. Robert folded his arms and mustered his argument. 'Maurice de la Pole offered you eighteen marks because he wanted to take away my clients. He was paying you a greater price than your fleeces were worth.'

'No,' she said firmly. 'They were worth eighteen marks to him. Are you saying that they are worth only fifteen to you? If that is the case, then I shall have to find another buyer. I am sure that there are others like Maurice de la Pole who would enjoy the opportunity to make me an offer.'

Briefly Robert wondered how easy it would be for Serlo Redbeard to wring the nun's scrawny neck, but decided that the villain would be far too conspicuous anywhere within twenty miles of the nunnery. 'You need not put yourself to the trouble of searching further afield, Reverend Mother,' he said smoothly. 'I am willing to look at your flock and reassess the value of their wool. And perhaps we could discuss a payment for your continued loyalty on top of whatever I offer you for your fleeces.'

The old nun considered and gave a cautious nod. 'Perhaps.'

Robert finished his wine and they continued to negotiate until they arrived at a settlement, hard-driven on both sides but satisfactory to each. He felt a grudging respect for the old nun, even if she did look as if she had been summoned from her crypt to do business with him.

'I must be the only wool merchant cutting off my nose to spite my face,' he said with a wry grin. 'God alone knows what Miriel will say when I tell her how much I have agreed for these fleeces.'

The nun gave a startled blink. 'Miriel?'

'My wife,' he said. 'She has weaving sheds in Lincoln and Nottingham.'

'Your wife.'

Robert hoped the Abbess hadn't suddenly become senile. She was staring at him in a strange way. 'Yes, my wife,' he said in a loud, deliberate voice. 'She comes from a family of Lincoln weavers.'

The Abbess gave a little shudder as if shrugging off an unwanted touch.

'Is there something wrong?' asked Robert.

'Would your wife's stepfather happen to have been Nigel Fuller?'

Now it was Robert's turn to stare, that same shudder running down his own spine. The Abbess's expression told him that there was going to be no joy in the association. 'Yes, it would. Why?'

The nun's hand went to her breast and grasped the silver crucifix hanging there. 'I wondered what had happened to her,' she murmured distractedly. 'We all worried for her and prayed that God would keep her safe despite her folly.'

Robert flexed his fingers and fought the urge to strangle the old nun. 'What folly?' he demanded. 'What are you talking about?'

She looked at him. 'You do not know, do you?'

'Know what? Are you telling me that my wife is a nun?' His voice carried a rising note of incredulity and dismay.

Mother Hillary raised her palm. 'Calm yourself, Master Willoughby. Your wife was indeed a novice here, but she never took the vows.'

Robert eased back into the chair and unbidden by the Abbess poured himself another cup of wine. He hated to be at a disadvantage in any situation. 'She came to you of her own will?' he asked and drank deeply.

'Her family felt that she was unsuited to marriage, and it would be best if she was fitted for a life in the Church,' Mother Hillary said. 'I agreed to take her for I saw that she had intelligence and ability, albeit that she was headstrong and deeply resentful of being placed in our care.' She shook her head and sighed.

'Then what happened? How did she come to leave?'

'There was trouble with some of the other sisters - not all of Miriel's making, I will say in her defence . . . and then with a young man at the time when King John's baggage train was lost.' She had hesitated over the last part as if not sure that she should speak, and her eyes were troubled.

'Indeed?' Robert clung to composure but, despite the wine burning in his belly, felt winter-frozen.

Mother Hillary was silent for a time and Robert was filled with the anxiety that she might not continue, but finally she steepled her fingers beneath her chin and spoke.

'The young man was very sick. At one point we thought he would die. She formed an attachment to him while nursing him back to health and, when he was well enough to leave, she went with him. There was some suspicion that they were lovers. What happened after that I know not. She took my mule, but he turned up in his old field three months later with no explanation as to how he came to be there.'

Robert had always known that there was more to Miriel than met the eye; it was part of the reason he had desired her to wife. But a young lover? He thought of the men of her acquaintance in Nottingham when she was wed to Gerbert, but no single one stood out as a candidate for the role. All the merchants and artisans who paid their respects were long-established dwellers in the city or came from well-known families. He would have noticed any strangers, any rivals for her attention and there had been not the slightest whisper of scandal attached to Miriel's behaviour.

There could not have been anyone since her marriage to him; he kept her too busy for that, asserted his rights as often as he could. Yet even as he reassured himself, he remembered her recent downcast moods, the way that she wept when he claimed his rights on her body.

'Do you know his name?'

Mother Hillary thought, but shook her head. 'It was several years ago and I have had more important matters to fill my mind since then. It was Norman I think; he was not English born. Clearly, if she is wedded to you, she has parted company with him.'

Robert nodded. 'Clearly,' he said in a wooden voice.

'I am as shocked as you,' said the nun, 'but I am glad too to hear that she has made a life for herself and found a good husband. My fear was that she would end her life in a ditch.'

Robert smiled without warmth. 'Whatever happened in the past is finished. I could not ask for a better helpmate and I love her dearly,' he replied, wondering just how dearly.

A tap on the door announced the arrival of the steward to show Robert the abbey's flocks. He rose with alacrity, eager to be gone from the room's enclosing walls and the Abbess's all too probing stare.

After he left, Mother Hillary poured herself another half-cup of wine, which was sinful and foolish given that she had already taken a full cup on an empty belly, but she needed something more than prayer to steady her shaking hands. Once she had relished greeting guests, negotiating with merchants, dancing attendance on the bishop when he visited, but she was becoming too old for this kind of fencing and it drained her to the marrow. She swallowed the wine; her chin nodded on her chest and she started to snore. When she woke with a jerk half an hour later, the bells were ringing out for the nones service and her memory was as sharp as crystal.

The steward led Robert past an area of cleared ground where labourers and masons were busy at work. The Abbess had swiftly taken advantage of Maurice de la Pole's extra three marks per sack, Robert thought, and asked his companion what the new building was going to be.

'Houses of retirement for wealthy widows and the like. Women who wish to renounce the world without taking vows.' The man waved his hand. 'In return for money or property rents, they'll dwell here and be looked after in both body and spirit until their dying day.'