The Marsh King's Daughter (51 page)

Robert turned from the door and eyed her with a frown. 'Of course not,' he said. 'What kind of man abuses the sick?'

'The sick?' She stared at him.

He tapped the side of his head. 'Well, it is obvious to everyone but yourself that you are suffering from a malady of the mind. You were desperately ill when you lost the child and your grief has overset your wits, hence these preposterous tales of murder and conspiracy.'

'I see. You believe I am mad.' Miriel nodded slowly, thinking it a good thing that her emotions were well out of reach. Her eyes flickered to the knife on Robert's belt. Claiming insanity would be a good excuse for stabbing him, in the heart.

'Not entirely out of your mind, but certainly touched by wood-wildness. A danger to yourself and others, and certainly not fit to carry on your trade.'

What a surprise, Miriel thought, and lay back on the bed, one knee raised, her breasts tautly outlined by the firm lacing of her gown. 'So you don't want to bed me.'

His face flushed and he rumpled his hands through his hair in an agitated gesture. 'I did not say that,' he growled.

'Well then, untie me.' She held out her hands and licked her lips.

Robert licked his lips too. He trod purposefully to the bed and gazed down at her. 'If you are out of your wits,' he said slowly, 'then I would be taking a great risk in untying you, for there is no telling what a madwoman will do in the throes of dementia, and I have heard it said that such an illness makes the victim fearsomely strong.' He unfastened his belt and draped it over the coffer, the scabbard still attached. Miriel tried her best not to look at the bone handle of the knife sticking out of the top of the cowhide sheath lest her glance draw Robert's attention.

'If you are not mad,' Robert continued, 'it still means that you believe me capable of murder, and it does not alter the fact that I caught you running away to your lover with a chestful of silver.' He gave a short, humourless laugh. 'I would be mad myself to untie you in those circumstances, you must agree.'

Miriel bit her lip. This was not going the way she intended. 'Please, Robert.' She extended her wrists to him in a gesture of supplication. 'The cord is chafing; I can't feel my fingers.'

'Mayhap not, but they haven't yet turned blue,' he said without compassion. Lifting his tunic, he unlaced the drawstring of his braies. 'Strange that you've never enticed me with your body before,' he mused. 'Either you want me to cut your bonds and it's a ruse - the minute you're free you'll kick me in the ballocks, or you're playing a game. Slave and master. Is that what you like?' He cocked his head to one side and his breathing grew swift as his words drove his arousal. 'Does de Caen tie you up when he fucks you? Is this what you want?' He threw himself on top of her, dragging up her skirts, bucking and plunging.

Miriel gave a single scream as he pierced her and then bit down on her lower lip. She did not fight him, but her body was as tense with the resistance of pain as a bent bow.

It didn't take him long. Desire and rage combined to create a lust so incandescent that it could not be sustained beyond the first bright burn and within moments he was shuddering in the throes of climax. Miriel gazed at the rafters, a sight she had seen a hundred times while Robert had his will of her. She was familiar with every knot and flaw in the beams, every dark shadow and crevice. Now she concentrated on them, holding herself together with their impassive wooden strength.

Gasping, Robert withdrew from her and eased his wilting penis back inside his braies. Then he drew her bunched skirts back over her legs and smoothed them down, not with any tenderness, but as if making a bed after a night's sleep. A task performed to make things neat and orderly.

'I'll untie you when we set out,' he said as he rebuckled his belt and hitched the scabbard until it was comfortable on his hip.

Miriel took her concentration from the rafters. 'When we set out?' she repeated.

He nodded. 'You don't think I am going to keep you here in Lincoln, do you?' he said. 'Not after the dance you have led me. Mad or not, you're an unfit wife. Small wonder that your stepfather wanted to put you in a convent.'

'Then why not just let me go.' She struggled to a sitting position and again held out her wrists to him. 'Cut my bonds and set me free.'

'Ah, sweetheart, that would be too easy, and I'm not the kind of man who lets a debt go unpaid. Besides, heaven knows the tales you might spread and the damage you might do the moment you were out of this door.'

'Then what do you intend?' Miriel asked huskily. She had a horrible vision of him taking her, still bound, to a quiet spot outside the city and disposing of her. He would tell folk that she had run away and no one would ever be any the wiser as to her fate.

'If a convent was the intention of your family, then I can only see fit to follow in their tradition,' he said. 'From St Catherine's you absconded, and to St Catherine's you shall return.'

'What!' The emotion that Miriel had thought safely out of the way on a shelf tumbled off and jolted through her body. 'You'll not put me in a nunnery!' In front of her face, her bound hands mocked her with their pose of dutiful prayer. She clenched them into fists.

'Not as an oblate nun, sweetheart, I agree,' he said with a bleak smile. 'That would be expecting too much of any respectable order of sisters. But there is naught to prevent you dwelling there as a guest. I shall pay a generous corrody to the abbey out of the profits from your weaving sheds, and the nuns will care for your bodily and spiritual needs.' He spread his hands. 'I could not wish for a more perfect answer to my dilemma.'

She tossed her head. 'And you think I will tamely remain as a boarder?'

Robert went to the door. 'Not tamely,' he said as he unfastened the bar and set his hand to the latch, 'but remain you will, I'll make sure of it.' He permitted himself a small, uncharitable smile. 'Or the nuns will.'

He went out, locking the door behind him.

Miriel glared in his wake, and swore like a footsoldier. If her hands had been free, she would have picked up the wooden fruit bowl on the coffer and hurled it at the door. As it was, she expended her rage in a furious, banshee shriek and flung herself from the bed to stamp up and down the room. And then, knowing that Robert would be listening, she compressed her lips and resorted to silent, swift pacing.

She glanced around the room, seeking a means to free her own wrists. Perhaps she could smash the water jug and cut her bonds on a jagged edge, or somehow manipulate the shears in her sewing basket. The ideas kindled in her mind and then burned swiftly to ash as she acknowledged that the deed, small triumph though it might be, would be futile. The rooms below would be well guarded and Robert had locked the door to the outer stairs. The window was no use to her either. Even if she managed to free the catch on the shutters, the aperture was perilously narrow, and the drop too high.

'So you just go as a lamb to the slaughter,' she told herself scathingly, 'and so does Nicholas while his son grows up an orphan - if he grows up at all.' The thought rekindled the flame. She had to do something. The water jar was the better object for severing her bonds. The shears, sharp although they were, would be difficult to manipulate, and unless she could open and shut them with ease, she would be unable to cut the cord.

The water jar stood on a hip-height gaming table at the side of the room. Miriel stooped to the rim, tipped it slightly, and took a long drink. The pottery was glazed an attractive green-gold with an impressed decoration of wheat ears around the wide belly. It had been one of her mother's favourite pieces. Miriel could remember her filling it with flowers in the height of summer, could remember the perfume of honeysuckle and pink roses tumbling over the spout. For a moment she lingered to feel the cold, smooth glaze and the ridges of pattern. There were tears in her eyes as she curled her fingertips over the rim of the jar and prepared to swing it.

The key turned in the lock of the inner door and before Miriel could move, Robert pushed Elfwen into the room and shut her in with her mistress.

'Knock when you want to come out,' he said through the wood, turned the key again, and clumped away downstairs.

Torn between relief at the jar's reprieve, and disappointment that her intention had been thwarted, Miriel relinquished her weapon back on the trestle and let out a huge sigh of frustration. Then she looked at her white-faced maid.

'I do not suppose that you are permitted to untie me either,' she said.

'No, mistress,' Elfwen said with a swallow, 'although it is my greatest wish that I could.'

Miriel eyed her and then the window. Perhaps she could just squeeze out, and if she tied the bedsheets together, she would have a rope.

Elfwen appeared to guess what she was thinking. 'He has set an armed guard beneath the window,' she said. 'He says that you will try to run away again and that you are a danger to everyone, most of all yourself.'

Miriel's upper lip curled. 'The only danger I am is to him, and he knows it.' She jerked her head at the door. 'Why has he sent you?'

Elfwen pointed to the foot of the bed. 'He thought you might want to use the piss-pot and not manage without help.'

Miriel stared at the girl and began to laugh, the sound growing deep and harsh as the spasms ripped up from her core. 'How chivalrous of him!' she gasped, tears streaming down her face. She clutched her belly where there was a gnawing ache as she gave vent to her emotion. 'He p-plots murder and forces me to lie with him whilst my hands are tied, and yet he w-worries about how I'm to use a p-piss pot! Ah Jesu!' She threw herself on the bed, clutching her aching stomach. It was almost like being in labour again. Rolling over, she buried her face in the bolster and fought the spasms.

Elfwen tentatively touched her shoulder. 'Do you want a drink of water?'

'To aid me to use the piss-pot?' It almost set her off again, but the first impetus had been spent and she was too weak to bear another bout. Trembling, she sat up and gestured aside the cup that the frightened maid proffered.

'Jesu, I'm sorry. I've been holding it in for too long.'

'I told you to be careful, mistress.' Elfwen produced a kerchief and used it to wipe Miriel's puffy tear-streaked face. 'I knew when I woke up in The Ship and found you gone that there was going to be trouble. Then he brought us back late last night and gleaned what you had done from the other servants.'

Miriel clutched her stomach. 'He claims that I have lost my wits and he wants to shut me up in a nunnery. He's taking me to St Catherine's as soon as it's light enough and the town gates are open.' She drew back a little and looked at Elfwen. 'Do you think that I have lost my wits? The truth,' she added, as the girl lowered her eyes. 'Even if you offend me, there is little enough I can do about it.'

Elfwen frowned and plucked at her gown in thought. 'No mistress, I do not,' she said at length, 'but I think that you have walked straight into the mouth of danger.'

Miriel grimaced. 'After the first step was taken, I could do nothing else.' She looked down at her bound wrists. 'I know that you cannot untie me, and small good it would do anyway. The window splay is too narrow to squeeze through and, as you say, he has posted guards lest somehow I still manage to run. But you are not so constrained.'

The girl glanced over her shoulder.

'It's all right,' Miriel said. 'Even if my husband is listening at the door, he cannot hear what is being said.'

'What do you want me to do?' There was definite misgiving in Elfwen's eyes.

'Go to Martin and Alyson Wudecoc in Boston and tell them what has happened and what Robert intends to do with me. They are my only hope of freedom.' She held Elfwen's gaze with her own. 'And you are my only hope of their knowing where I am.'

After a moment, and to Miriel's weak relief, the girl nodded. 'I wasn't going to stay once you'd gone anyway, mistress,' she said. 'Not after the way Master Robert's treated you and kicked poor Will. 'Twill be me next, and I'm no man's scapegoat.'

'Bless you,' Miriel said. 'Jesu, you think I'd have no tears left to cry.' She wiped an impatient sleeve across the moisture welling in her eyes. 'Take Will with you as well,' she said. 'The way Robert is now, I know he would kill him for spite.'

'I will,' Elfwen nodded. 'I've put his basket out of sight in the store room and kept him quiet with a marrow bone.'

'There's one more boon I must ask of you,' Miriel said as the girl rose to leave.

Elfwen immediately looked wary again. 'Mistress?' 'I'm afraid I do need to use the piss-pot after all.'