The Wife Test (10 page)

As soon as the old lady’s footsteps faded, the others turned on Chloe with expressions ranging from outrage to panic.

“We’re to be
tested?”
Alaina flushed with indignation.

“You knew about this, Chloe, and you didn’t warn us?” Helen asked.

“Sacre coeur!”
Lisette was taken aback for entirely different reasons. “How can you know how good a wife we will make—you are not even a man!”

Margarete looked devastated. “What if we don’t pass this test? Will they send us back to the convent? Do we still get to be the duke’s daughters?”

Their reaction to her hasty gambit hadn’t occurred to Chloe. How was she going to reassure them, short of telling them there wasn’t any “wife test”?

“No, no.” She rushed to take Margarete’s wringing hands and put an arm around Helen’s stiff shoulders. “This isn’t a test to see if we’re worthy. We’re already the duke’s adopted daughters—nothing can change that. This is a test that allows the abbess to match men and maids … by learning something of the man’s true needs and nature and matching it to a maid’s essence and abilities.”

That seemed to mollify them a bit.

Alaina’s nose unwrinkled. “Then we don’t have to bake bread or stuff mattresses or mend garments?”

“Heavens, no.” Chloe tried not to think about the fact that she hadn’t a clue what she
would
have them do if the king agreed to the “abbess’s” request.

“But what if the king does not accept the convent’s wife test?” Lisette asked. “How will he decide who we wed?”

“Line us up and pair us off by height?” Alaina said with an edge that contained both anxiety and umbrage.

“Display us to his unwedded noblemen like a tray of plum tarts and tell them to take their pick?” Helen, too, was rigid with indignation.

“I don’t know,” Chloe admitted, trying not to show her uneasiness.

The chamber was west-facing and warmed by the late afternoon sun. One by one, they turned away to settle on the cots, not speaking, trying to digest all they had experienced in the last few hours and to comprehend the fact that in a few hours their fates would be sealed by a king who knew nothing about them but considered them his own personal assets, to be disposed of as he saw fit.

After a time Chloe surfaced from her thoughts to find all four of the others staring at her anxiously, expectantly.

“What will we do, Chloe?” Margarete said in a small voice.

She swallowed hard and drew herself up straight. They looked to her for direction and she owed it to them and to dear old Sister Archie to provide it. If the king rejected the “wife test,” she would just have to think of something else.

“I’ll tell you what we will do. We will don our best gowns and go down to the great hall to dine with the king and his nobles. They will stare at us and search us for flaws and find none. We will be the most modest and respectful and mannerly young women this court has ever seen.” Her determination grew with each word. “The good Sisters have taught us every subject and skill we could need as chatelaines of noble households. We must demand respect for their labors by being so virtuous and capable that we make these Englishmen wish every wife in England came from—”

There was a thumping and voices outside the door, and she sprang to her feet as a brawny fist was laid to the ironbound planks. She called permission to enter, and the door flew back to admit several servants overseen by none other than Mattias and Withers. The maids brightened at the sight of familiar faces and hurried to greet them.

“Had to make sure ye got yer chests.” Mattias wrung the woolen hauberk in his hands and looked around the chamber. “F-fine billet ye got here.”

“Thank you, Mattias,” Chloe said, following his gaze around the chamber. “Will you and Withers be released soon, to go home?”

“Naw.” Mattias wagged his head and Withers copied him. “We ain’t got no fam’ly. Our old lord, he got killed at Crecy, an’ Sir Hugh said we could go join his household, up north. Me and Withers here, Fenster an’ Willum and some others … we said we would.”

“So you’ll be going to Sir Hugh’s home?” She felt a sudden sinking in her stomach at the thought of them staying with Sir Hugh. She stood straighter to compensate. “It was good of him to offer you a place.”

They nodded and smiled awkwardly. Mattias looked as if he had more to say, but they backed to the door before he stopped and spoke again.

“Me an’ the men, we wish ye Godspeed. And if ye ever need anythin’ … just send word and we’ll come.”

Chloe felt tears welling in her eyes and was on the verge of embarrassing herself when Margarete flew past her and flung her arms around the burly old soldier’s neck.

One by one they hugged Mattias and Withers, and by the time they were finished there wasn’t a dry eye in the chamber. The men ducked out the door, wiping their noses and grumbling about the way the dust in the castle made their eyes water. Chloe and the others watched them go, knowing that bittersweet farewell marked the true end of the journey and the beginning of their new and uncertain lives as English ladies.

The torches were lit, a fire crackled in the huge stone hearth, and the great hall was already full of people when they arrived. The serving was beginning, though there were a number of men still clustered around the hearth, drinking, and a number of finely dressed ladies were just arriving. The duke’s daughters trailed Lady Marcella like a row of downy ducklings around the linen-draped table toward the king’s chair at the center of the long, U-shaped board.

Silence followed in a wave as they passed the nobles, knights, and ladies of the court; talk ceased as they approached and started anew the instant they were past. Servers with trays and pitchers and pots on poles paused to watch as they swept by. Not a head in the room didn’t turn to follow their progress and watch them approach the king.

In honor of the occasion the maids had dressed in their finest garments: gowns of soft, supple woolen adorned by intricate silk embroidery that curled and entwined over necks, sleeves, and hems. Loden green, sweet russet, marigold yellow, dusty claret, and hollyhock blue … the colors had been chosen to compliment their strikingly different coloring, and together they created the impression of a vibrant, living rainbow.

Until that moment, feeling scores of pairs of eyes focused in judgment on them, Chloe had never envied Helen, Alaina, and Margarete their skill with a needle. She glanced self-consciously at her own gown, with its lack of ornamentation, and told herself that her worth lay in other talents. Reading and writing and … just possibly … hoodwinking kings into listening to her.

Lady Marcella led them before the king himself, where she paused and executed a perfect curtsy that set the maids bobbing to copy her.

So this was how a king dined, Chloe thought as she took in the king’s ermine-trimmed silk tunic, jeweled coronet, ornate gilded chair, and the heavy gold dishes and wine cup arrayed before him. To King Edward’s left sat a lavishly dressed man wearing velvets and a lesser coronet. Lady Marcella squinted to be certain who it was, then greeted him as “Your Grace” and motioned to them behind her back, instructing them to imitate her display of respect. To the king’s immediate right sat the same “Lord Bromley” who had accompanied the king earlier that day.

A motion of the king’s head dismissed them to the care of a page who led them to a rank of prime seats above the common run of nobles and surprisingly near the king himself. As they were seated, old Lady Marcella informed them: “You have just made your curtsies to the King of England, the Duke of Bedford on his left, and the Earl of Bromley, the Lord Treasurer of England, on his right. Bedford is the one man in the kingdom who can best the king at chess and live.”

“The Earl of Bromley is the Lord Treasurer?” Chloe looked back at the portly fellow with the great chain of office around his neck and the shrewd look in his eye. “Is he the one who keeps the tax rolls with the lists of noble houses?”

“He is indeed.” The old lady chuckled. “The king declares he is the one man in the kingdom who knows the secret of getting blood from turnips.”

She chuckled at Chloe’s widened eyes and beckoned a servant over to fill their cups. Before long they were being waited upon by a steady stream of servants bearing platters, baskets, and pots. They were all so intent on remembering table customs and sneaking peeks at the elegant headdresses the ladies were wearing that it was some time before Chloe became aware of an odd prickle in her skin.

Across the hall, on the far wing of the banquet table, a number of young men were gathered in a tight cluster, engaged in a heated exchange with someone in their midst. Several times they paused to stare over their shoulders at her and her sisters, then returned to their conversation with increased vigor. When they returned to their seats, farther down the great table, she discovered Sir Hugh had been at the center of that volatile clique and now was staring at her with a face like a thundercloud.

She refused to quail or cower, but the strength required to keep up that resolve left her little energy to enjoy her first banquet. So she sat like a bolt of unembellished woolen, scarcely able to taste her food, praying that the king would render his decision soon and end this wretched suspense.

Hugh had watched his former charges enter the hall and conquer it without so much as a sidelong glance. He studied the shining hair, sparkling eyes, and shy, maidenly smiles that were sending every unwedded man in the hall … and a goodly number of the married ones … into an acquisitive frenzy.

That was an ache for Edward’s head, he told himself. None of his concern.

But moments later his thoughts circled stubbornly back to the problem of what would become of them. He had tried to speak to the king again as the day wore on, but Edward was closeted first with his treasurer and then with his pregnant wife for most of the time. He thought of the eager young nobles who had just quizzed him on the maids and gave Graham, seated nearby and mooning visibly over them, a dour look.

He had tried to talk to his friend, but, against all advice, the rut-maddened wretch had raced all over Windsor looking for the Earl of Norwich, hoping to get him to carry a matrimonial petition to the king. Upon learning that Norwich had already returned to his estates, Graham hot-footed it to Bromley to see if the Lord Treasurer might be willing to do him the same service. He was practically panting for a Bride of Virtue.

Hugh’s nose curled.

Undignified.

Unmanly.

He glanced across the hall at Chloe of Guibray and thought again of her audacious conduct and of the king’s reaction to it. Clearly, Edward was amused, which was not necessarily a good thing. The king was known to take—
and even make
—diversion from the predicaments of his courtiers and was not above using even his most devoted knights and nobles for a bit of sport. Imagine what he could do with a brash insolent young wench with enough beauty, wit, and innocence to be truly dangerous. If only there were some way to peel open her head and pour some caution and common sense into—

“Chloe of Guibray. Lady Chloe.”

With a start, Hugh realized that it was the king who had spoken. Edward, too, had been staring intently at her.

“Yes, Your Highness?” Chloe of Guibray sprang up like an untied sapling, drawing old Lady Marcella up with her.

A hush fell over the assembly as the king turned to Hugh and gave him a worrisome look of appraisal before swinging his gaze back to Chloe.

Hugh’s stomach contracted into a knot.

“I believe your abbess has offered your services in assisting me with a weighty decision,” the king continued.

“Yes, Your Highness.” At the sound of her clear, lilting voice, all other conversation in the hall abruptly stopped.

“I have given the matter consideration,” the king continued. “But before I render a decision, I must know more about this ‘wife test.’ How long will it take? You see, I would not keep my nobles from their lands any longer than necessary at this time of year.”

The slight pause before she replied went unnoticed by everyone but Hugh.

“A week should be sufficient, Your Highness,” she answered.

“And at the end of that week, what would happen?” His sly, conjecturing tone gave Hugh a very bad feeling.

“I would present to Your Highness the results of the ‘wife test’ … in the form of … suggested pairings of your nobles and the duke’s daughters.”

“And these standards you will use …” The king leaned forward with a hint of a smile. “How do I know they are fair and reasonable?”

“The test has been used and refined by our convent for over a hundred years. The reputation of the brides who have come from the Convent of the Brides of Virtue speaks strongly for the wisdom embodied in it.”

“Just what are these wise and wonderful standards?” Edward’s long face lit with a wry smile. “Saints! Should you not publish them far and wide?” He swept the hall and the lands beyond with a hand. “Would they not improve the state of wedded bliss in every corner of the earth?”

Laughter rolled through the hall, then was stifled in favor of her reply.

“We do not presume to know what is best for all of humankind, Your Highness … only for the maids raised in the convent’s care and the noblemen who wed them. As to the exact details of our standards, they are never revealed. To publish them far and wide might lead unscrupulous persons to try to take advantage and pretend to be that which they are not.”

Hugh could stand it no more.

“Surely, Sire, you cannot be serious about permitting a mere maid to sit in judgment on nobles of the realm”—he lurched to his feet—“to decide the course of their lives and the bearers of their heirs. She may be the abbess’s appointed one, but for godssake, she is still little more than a girl!”

The mirth in the king’s face faded as he turned to Hugh.

“I believe Lady Chloe has stated she will
recommend
pairings.” Though his tone remained genial, there was an edge to his words. “It is I, Sir Hugh, who will decide the future of the nobles of England.” When he turned to Chloe, his features warmed once more.

“Thus is the flaw in your abbess’s plan revealed,” he declared.

She paled visibly. “F-flaw, Highness?”

“If we are to rely on these closely guarded ‘standards’ and on your judgment regarding your sisters’ mates … then whom do we rely on to judge you? As the holy church teaches, no man is a proper judge of himself. How, then, am I to decide on
your
future husband?”

A flaw indeed. From all over the torchlit hall, it was evident that she had been caught flat-footed by the king’s question. She looked to her sister maidens, then back at the king with what could only be a hint of panic. Hugh felt a huge and utterly unexpected wave of anxiety …

Then the king himself rescued her.

“The solution is clear to me, Lady Chloe. I must appoint someone from my own court to administer this ‘test’ to you.”

Calls of “I’ll test her for ye, Majesty” and “Give me an hour or two with her, an’ I’ll tell ye what kind o’ man she needs” mingled with raucous laughter and proposals for methods of “testing” wives before marrying them.

“No, truly, Your Majesty, that won’t be necessary,” she called out.

But the king was now listening only to his own sardonic judgment.

“We would need someone extraordinarily cool-headed and rational,” he said, searching his guests as if measuring all present for a possible appointment to that post. “Someone not easily swayed by a fetching smile or a flirtatious glance. Someone whose vast learning and uncompromising personal standards would allow him to weigh the very hearts and souls of the distaff side.” He suddenly rose from his chair, drawing his subjects to their feet all over the hall, and raised his arms in grand oratorical style.

“I believe there may be just such a man amongst us. A man whose learning, logic, and inclinations make him uniquely suited for this task. A man whose reputation with and knowledge of women—I believe I can safely say—are quite unparalleled in English nobility.” He turned his gaze on Hugh. “That man is Sir Hugh of Sennet.”

There was an instant of shocked silence before laughter erupted through the hall. The king himself broke into a broad and exceedingly wicked grin.

“B-But, Sire—” Hugh stammered, reeling, blindsided by the king’s double-edged praise.

“No, no, Sir Hugh. None of your wretched modesty. You are known throughout the court as a perceptive and dispassionate
critic
of women, are you not? And since you are already acquainted with these maids, who better to help administer this ‘wife test’ ?”

The king watched Hugh’s ill-disguised horror and gave a hugely satisfied sigh, indicating to all who knew him that his mind was made up.

“Yes, I believe that is quite the solution. It is my decree that, together, Sir Hugh and Lady Chloe will ‘test’ the maids and present their nuptial pairings to us in seven days. The vows will be spoken the following day in this very hall.”

As the realization of what the king had just done to him settled in, blood began to roar in Hugh’s head and his vision washed crimson. He all but missed the king’s second major pronouncement of the evening: the identities of the grooms-to-be.

“The lucky husbands of these maids will be William, Baron of Chester … Sir Jaxton, heir to Louden-Day … Simon of Cornwall, newly created Earl of Candle … Sir Graham, heir to Ledding … and … Horace, Earl of Ketchum.”

A great murmur went up. These were important marriages indeed.

When the king turned to him, it took every ounce of Hugh’s battle-honed self-control to nod and accept the demeaning charge he had just been given. Afterward, he stood rooted to the spot while the king turned back to his meal and clapped his hands to call for music.

The guests quickly resumed eating and drinking, and the hall began to hum with music and speculation. Chloe of Guibray stood on the far side of the hall, staring at him, her dismay every bit as obvious as his. When old Lady Marcella moved down the table to whisper in her ear, she sank abruptly onto the bench and lowered her gaze with a small, forced smile. She neither ate nor drank, while her fellow maidens finished their meal and spoke quietly amongst themselves.

After what seemed an age, Lady Marcella gathered them up in her motherly wings and ushered them from the assembly. Chloe, last in line, paused at the door to cast Sir Hugh’s a turbulent look before following the other maidens.

The rest of the evening Hugh spent trying to avoid the drunken toasts raised to his appointment as the realm’s official “wife judge.” All he wanted was to escape the hall, the castle, and the dreadful specter that he felt rising out of the darkest recesses of his mind and body. Something shapeless, encroaching, and alarming. Something he had wrestled to a standstill in the dark on the deck of the ship, and believed he had vanquished. The seductive and utterly corrupting pleasure of having
looked.

Since that quick and volatile glimpse in a cottage on the French shore, the sight of her naked body had never been more than a wink away from his thoughts. Only the most constant and ruthless vigilance had kept it from rising and repossessing his senses, as it was doing even now.

She was formed of a tantalizing geometry of curves and lines unlike any others found in nature. Breasts … cool, tempting globes … like apples or those scriptural “pomegranates” … crowned with velvety peaks that rose and fell with every breath. When he could tear his attention from them, it focused on her throat. A slim, delicate column hugged by moist tendrils of hair that flowed down over her shoulders. And such shoulders … veiled coyly by dark tresses … broad and smooth … like polished ivory …

Saints besieged. Under her garments she must always look like that … soft, ripe, and voluptuously curved. A very vision of Original Temptation. Woman at her most elemental and alluring.

His mental gaze recoiled to her shocked face and caught on her eyes. Seductive blue pools … clear and unsullied … harboring a deep and subtle flow.

And like deep waters, treacherous as the Devil himself.
Each time that shattering vision of her nakedness gripped him, he was rescued by the memory of one of old Brother Hericule’s diatribes on the nature of women. Beware the woman of apparent virtue and quiet capability, the old monk had proclaimed. Females were at their most dangerous when calm and cooperative and seemingly well-contained. Better by far to have to bear with females of blatantly giddy, witless, and shallow natures … they quickly reminded men of their baser sides and caught no man unawares.

Canny. Capable. Self-possessed. Wrapped in a deceptive cloak of innocence. Not yet fully aware of her power, but wielding it, all the same. It was as if the old brother had foreseen Chloe of Guibray standing naked in the firelight.

He began to tremble.

She was right.

He had not only looked, he had
liked
it.

Fleeing the wine-heated revels of the great hall for the cool night air outside, he spotted a glow coming from the open chapel door and headed for it. By the flickering light of a single tallow lamp, he found the priest assigned to hear evening confessions, Father Ignatius, snoring loudly on a stool beside the screen that separated him from potential confessors.

He shook the portly priest awake and proceeded to pour into his ear a shockingly detailed list of transgressions. Thirty-two generalized damnings, seventeen eternal condemnations of specific persons and objects, nine irreverent and possibly profane exclamations of the sacred name …

“How penitent of you to keep such a scrupulous tally, my son.”

… several incidents of anger to the point of physical violence, three major falsehoods, pervasive ill-temper, resentment of and the urge to defy their God-anointed sovereign …

“We all have moments of weakness and ingratitude, my son.”

… then the juicier revelations that made the priest sit straighter and listen more eagerly … powerful carnal desires, incidents of nocturnal pollution, and a nearly continuous stream of prurient and lustful thoughts … including the sight of a woman’s full, naked breasts … the slide of her soft, fire-kissed hair over his own naked skin … the erotic resilience of her smooth, well-rounded hips as he pressed his own engorged loins against them … the parting of her cool, sleek thighs and the tantalizing heat that lay at the dark, moist nexus of them … lips like juicy, just-ripened cherries that he wanted to bite … and teeth like pearls that he wanted to feel dragging across his skin … biting his shoulder, his belly, his …

The ample priest staggered from the confessional later, having doled out enough penance to keep the wretched confessor on his knees for most of the night, and discovered it was none other than Hugh of Sennet draped over the chancel railing and muttering in agonized tones the litany of penitence he had just assigned. Sir Hugh of Sennet. A man raised by a strict order of monks. A man of lofty spiritual aspirations and unassailable morality. Until now.

Father Ignatius shook his head to rid it of the images Sir Hugh’s shockingly vivid iniquity had burned into it. Clearly, something had happened to the good knight … some major visitation of temptation … some devastating encounter that initiated his senses into the pleasures of the flesh. The priest’s eyes widened and he clicked his parched tongue, thinking of the wine flowing freely in the king’s hall. This could be worth something.

Little did Chloe guess that the king’s appointment of her to administer the “wife test” would cause changes in the way her sisters behaved toward her.

“Do you have enough blankets, Chloe?” Alaina asked with unprecedented generosity.

“Oh, no, you wash first. I need only a little water,” Margarete insisted.

“Would you like to try my lavender soap?” Helen offered.

“I have a bit of tatted lace that would be quite fetching on the neck of your gown, Chloe,” Lisette said as Chloe brushed her plain gown and hung it on a peg between the others’ highly decorative garments.

But even more pointed changes were revealed as they finished their evening ablutions, removed their outer garments, and knelt in their shifts by the cots for evening prayers.

“Holy Mother Mary, I entreat you to intercede for our sister Chloe … that she be given a wise and discerning heart,” Alaina prayed. “And that her heart will show her it would be best for me to have a husband who appreciates great beauty and has a deep purse and a love of fine clothes and elegant linen.”

“Guide our Chloe to make the right decisions for us,” Helen said earnestly, her clasped fingers pale. “Help her to decide that I would best suit a man of wisdom and dignified bearing … a man who has the king’s ear … a man who bears responsibility and needs a comforting hand on his care-worn brow.”