The Marsh King's Daughter (58 page)

'You should have woken me.'

'You were so deep in slumber, I could have rung St Botolf's bells in your ears and you would not have roused,' he said with a smile. 'You didn't hear me trip on the hem of my cloak and curse, although it was nigh in your ear. I am glad you were able to sleep so well. Yesterday, when I found you, you looked like a lost ghost, so wan and gaunt.'

Miriel grimaced. 'Three weeks in Abbess Euphemia's tender care would turn anyone into a lost ghost,' she said. 'You don't know how good it is to be warm again - and well fed,' she added as she finished the last scrap of frumenty. 'They said that a diet of gruel and water would purge my mind of the evil humours affecting it.' She made a small gesture, as if casting something from her. 'It's finished now I have sworn to myself that I will not brood.'

Looking at her, Nicholas said, 'Martin and I went clown to the wharves this morning in search of news.'

She met his eyes. 'And was there any?'

'Only that St Catherine's will require much work to make it habitable again. More than half of it burned down to the ground. From what a barge-man told us, the fire was started by the old Abbess in a state of confusion. Apparently she was looking for her cat. For now, the nuns have dispersed to Sempringham Abbey. There was no mention of you, nor of Robert.'

'It would not matter if there was,' Miriel said. 'What happened was the will of God - the last ripple,' she said with a shiver.

There was a brief silence, the kind in which, given other circumstances, a prayer might have been said for the dead man. Nicholas broke it by placing his son in the wet-nurse's arms, and turning to Miriel.

'Walk with me,' he requested, and lifted Alyson's spare cloak from the wall peg.

Rising, Miriel shook out her skirts and swished the cloak around her shoulders.

Outside, the wind was as brisk as a knife and the sun lent only a small gentling of warmth. If summer was on the horizon, it was not yet visible. Miriel huddled into Alyson's cloak, glad of the double wool lining. Nicholas took the lead, sheltering her with his body, and headed again for the wharves.

'Martin told me that you had borne a child, and that it had died.' He glanced round at her as they walked. His eyes were narrowed against the wind, his expression taut, as if facing into a storm. 'I assume it was ours?'

Miriel bit her lip. 'I thought I was barren,' she said, 'but it was Robert who was unable to father children.'

'Why didn't you tell me?'

She shook her head. 'Because I was ignorant of the symptoms. I had to be told by a physician that I was with child. Besides,' she added with a spark of anger, 'what good would it have done? You were wedded to Magdalene, and she too had conceived. I saw her on the St Maria the morning after we returned from Bruges, and she was wearing naught but a sheet.' Her voice took on an accusing note, full of hurt and anger. 'You took her to a bed still warm from the print of my body. What kind of love is that?'

'It wasn't love,' he said savagely, 'it was despair.'

They emerged on to the wharfside and the full force of the wind attacked, no longer just a knife, but a full, slicing sword. Miriel clenched her teeth and put her head down. Nicholas took her arm and drew her at a half-run along the quay until they came to the St Maria. Her sail was furled and her decks bare. Nicholas dismissed the watchman with a brusque nod and led Miriel on board, drawing her to the deck shelter beneath the forecastle.

'I wanted you; I couldn't have you,' he said as he secured the flaps against the wind. 'Magdalene eased my pain.'

The watchman had left a small brazier burning. Miriel held out her hands to the glowing charcoal embers. 'You mean she took advantage of it?'

He shrugged. 'At first, perhaps, but not without my full consent. My eyes were wide open when I married her.' He frowned, seeking the right words. 'Sometimes love strikes like lightning, and its power is as blinding. Other times it comes gently, creeps up on you unawares and covers you like a blanket. Magdalene was my blanket, and I grieve deeply to have lost her.'

'I'm sorry.' Miriel looked at her hands outstretched to the warmth. Now that they had their moment of intimacy to speak, she wanted to tear open the shelter flaps and run for the safe haven of company. She did not want to speak of Magdalene, but knew that she must if she was to unburden her guilt.

'I saw her as my rival,' she said painfully. 'She took you when I thought she had no right ... I even hated her for a time.' She raised her head and looked at him. His expression was impassive. She could not tell if he was loathing her for her confession. 'But when I thought beyond the jealousy, I knew that I was being unfair. I had chosen my road of my own free will, why should I begrudge you yours? You may not believe me, but I too grieved when she died. We spoke of you when she was sick, and it healed wounds on both sides. We made our peace.' She touched his arm. 'I would make my peace with you also.'

He raised his brows, questioning without speech.

'You still owe a ransom to the men who saved you from drowning. I was intending to pay it with Mathilda's crown I can no longer do that, but I am a rich widow. I have all Robert's wealth at my disposal, and it would be fitting to use it for that purpose. Then you won't have to sell any of your ships.'

His lips curved with grim humour. 'Blood money, I believe it was once called,' he said. 'But you don't need to go so far to make your peace with me.'

'But I do.' She looked up at him and edged closer so that they were sharing the same space. 'We agreed to a truce that time in the counting house, not peace.'

The fine creases at his eye-corners deepened and a spark kindled in his eyes. 'So we did.' His arm suddenly curved around her waist, drawing her hip to hip against him. 'Fair enough. I pride myself upon being a reasonable man. I will consent to peace if you will stand before a priest with me.'

It was what Miriel wanted to hear, and yet she held back. It was only fair to warn him. 'If I was not barren before, then I am now,' she said. 'The birth was so difficult that the midwives said I would never carry a child again. I know you have Nicholas, but I cannot give him brothers or sisters.'

For a while he said nothing, and she braced herself for rejection. Then his arms tightened around her. 'We both have Nicholas,' he said. 'It is you I desire, not your abilities as a brood mare. You are my lightning.'

She made a sound that was half-laugh and half-sob because she was torn between the joy and the pain of the moment. All the futility of the past, all the broken dreams, which could have been hers from the start. 'You once offered to take me across the North Sea and up the Rhine,' she said. 'Does that offer still hold true?'

He tilted his head and pretended to consider. 'Will the morrow suffice?'

She laughed with delight and pulled his mouth down to hers. They embraced, until embracing was not enough, and their clothes an encumbrance.

The watchman's pallet was fortuitously to hand and they lay upon it and made love as wild and molten as the lightning.

In the aftermath, perspiration cooling on their bodies, breathing harsh and hearts pounding, they lay still joined. Miriel licked the sea-salt taste of sweat from the hollow of Nicholas's throat with the tip of her tongue. He stroked her breast, then his touch moved sideways to the cord of gold thread dangling in her shadowy cleavage. He lifted the necklace on his finger and studied the pearl trefoil attached by three links of gold chain.

He frowned. 'Isn't this part of. . . ?'

She silenced him with a swift palm across his lips. 'It's a reminder of our peace,' she murmured with a smile. 'Like a ring is a symbol of marriage.'

He looked at her and then he laughed and reached for his clothes. 'Let us go and find that priest,' he said.

To this day no one knows what happened to King John's royal treasure. That it went missing between the accident to the baggage train and the coronation of John's son in 1220 is not in dispute. An inventory of regalia assembled for Henry Ill's crowning tallies very little with John's known possessions of four years earlier. The missing items include the imperial regalia of the Empress Mathilda. As a novelist, this was just too good an opportunity to pass up!

There are several theories about just what happened on the Wellstream estuary and the subject is still hotly debated in academic circles. The chroniclers of the time, rather like some tabloid journalists of today, were apt to make the facts as juicy as possible for the entertainment of the readers. I have chosen the dramatic paths of the chroniclers Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris as a vehicle for my story, rather than the more prosaic version of Ralph of Coggeshall. There is also the possibility that John's regalia was looted from his body when he died at Newark
Castle shortly after the accident to the baggage train. Unless the treasure turns up with its true story attached, no one will ever know.

Although characters such as Hubert de Burgh, Eustace the Monk and Stephen Trabe existed (Eustace the Monk really did come to the grisly end described in chapter 14), the major personalities in The Marsh King's Daughter are my own creations. I have, however, striven to take their circumstances from my research into their period. There was indeed cut-throat competition between wool merchants and many of them made their way to fame and fortune by deeds that would not look out of place among the Mafia today. The Prioress of the Benedictine nunnery of Rowney in Hertfordshire wrote to King Henry complaining of a runaway nun who was roaming abroad in secular dress, bringing disrepute upon the order.