The Seasons Series; Five Books for the Price of Three

by Domning, Denise

  Fear rose in Johanna until it swallowed even her anger. She tugged her cloak more tightly around her and turned her betraying rings gem-inward to her palms. To die because of the pretentious finery Katel demanded she wear would be the most horrible of ironies. Only after the last of their troop rounded the corner of the abbey's stony perimeter and exited the coopers' lane for the chandlers' enclave did the crowd quiet.

  Relief coursed through her. Never before had that small field seemed so broad or Stanrudde's folk so unfriendly. Someone yanked on her cloak's hem.

  Johanna yelped in nervous reaction and turned in her saddle. At her palfrey's side stood Agnes, Johanna’s former maidservant. Banished by Katel once his seed had taken root in her womb, the young woman's once lush dark hair now hung in damp, matted strings about her hollow-cheeked visage. Her shoes were naught but rags wrapped around her feet; only a threadbare blanket protected her and Katel's unwanted spawn from the rain.

  The starving woman again caught her former employer's wife by the cloak hem. "Mistress!" What remained of Agnes's life was invested in that single word.

  At her cry Theobald glanced behind him, his face twisting as he recognized his master's discarded leman. He roweled his mount around and raised his hand to drive away the girl. "Get away, whore."

  Trapped amid these horses and too worn by hunger to scream, Agnes could only turn her back to protect her child.

  "Nay," Johanna cried, "you'll not strike one so hurt and helpless!" She spurred her palfrey until she stood between the starving woman and her husband's man.

  Theobald, his hand yet held high in threat, glared at his mistress. "You know as well as I that whores like her are not allowed to approach household members. You'll move your horse and let me do as I must."

  "Not this time." Johanna's words were as harsh as the wind whistling down the narrow lane. "I say you'll leave her be."

  Theobald bared his teeth, his arm stiffening as if to strike her in Agnes's stead.

  "Do it," Johanna goaded, straightening in her saddle until she glowered down at Katel's man from her superior height, "but think carefully over what you do. I am still your better. Strike me, and I will see you charged in court with assault, despite my husband."

  With a fiery breath of frustration, Theobald dropped his hand to his side. "I will tell the master what you have done."

  "But of course you must." Johanna lowered her wimpled head and retreated into the role of obedient wife that she'd played for all her marriage's sixteen years. "I would expect nothing less of you."

  With a raging hiss Katel's agent again turned his horse toward the city's center and the spice merchant's home. "Ride on," he shouted to the menservants.

  Drawing her palfrey to one side, Johanna let the troop pass her. As they went, her maid and the men-servants each shot her brief glances. She ignored them to wrench off one of her rings, then leaned down to press the bit of gold and stone into the starving woman's hand. "Take it with my blessing. I only pray it may be of some help to you. If any question the gift, send them to me."

  Agnes clutched the treasure close to her heart, the thanks that filled her eyes making tears of shame sprout in Johanna's. "You were always kind, Mistress, doing what you could. I know you would have aided me more if he allowed it." The searing emphasis in her voice left no doubt she meant Katel. With that, Agnes darted away, clutching potential salvation close to her heart.

  Johanna stared after her, guilt spearing her heart. But she hadn't done more and not because Katel disallowed it. Indeed, she'd been grateful to leave her husband's bed after the birth of her son in her second year of wedded bliss. She’d been grateful that he’d used Agnes and all the other women, because it meant he wasn’t using her. Guilt grew. If she'd been more of a wife to her husband, Agnes might not have needed today’s charity.

  Johanna killed that bitter thought as she turned her palfrey's head toward the town's center and the house her father had built. It wasn't she who'd failed Katel, but he, her. If her husband had been a more forgiving man, theirs might have been a true marriage instead of the mockery it was.

  Not a soul stirred along the narrow lane, and the unusual quiet roused Johanna from her dark thoughts. She glanced around her. Set wall to wall, the dwellings that lined the lane were so alike, what with their whitewashed walls framed by dark timbers and caps of thatch, that they gave the appearance of being one long building. Just now, every one of them glowered blindly down onto the street, lower-level workshops closed, second- and third-story windows tightly shuttered. The householders were besieged. That trade should be halted on a normal business day spoke to the desperation of Stanrudde's starving.

  Once again, the fear Johanna'd known in the market field returned. Had not Theobald claimed that the hungry were attacking their betters in the hopes of finding wealth enough to fill their bellies? Of a sudden, she wished she hadn't let the menservants ride ahead of her. She drummed her heels into the palfrey's sides, urging the tired beast into something faster than a plod as they rounded the corner from the chandlers' enclave onto the ropemakers' street. They were barely on the lane when someone leapt out to grab her mount by the bridle. Johanna gasped in blind terror, yanking desperately on her reins in an effort at escape.

  "Nay Mama, it's me," her son cried.

  Johanna breathed out her fear as she stared down at Peter, her only child. There wasn't much of Katel to be seen in Peter, save for his blessedly well-shaped nose. Instead, she and he shared the same curling reddish gold hair and bright blue eyes, even the same pattern of dappling freckles on their pale skin. Having just reached ten and four, Peter had added at least a hand in height during these five months of Johanna’s absence for his head now reached past her waist’s level as he stood beside her horse. It wasn't his father's small frame that he'd inherited, but his grandsire's far larger form.

  Peter was the only good thing to come out of her misbegotten marriage, the only thing that both she and Katel cherished. As love for her only child washed over Johanna, she leaned down in the saddle and ran gloved fingers through his tousled hair. "Peter, you frightened me half unto death!"

  The corners of her son's mouth lifted briefly then the golden wisps that were his brows rose. "Mama, what are you doing here? I thought you were set on staying with the sisters."

  All Johanna's anger and bitterness returned. So she had been. How easily Theobald had pried her from the quiet comfort of the convent simply by reminding the prioress that Johanna was Katel's wife, and Katel wished her returned to him.

  "Your father has called me home for some reason of his own," Johanna said, struggling to keep the harsh edge from her words. It was wrong to berate Peter's sire in front of him. In an attempt to distract Peter from her hatred for his sire, she turned the question around on her child. "I think I should be asking the same thing of you. Why are you out and about when you should be in Master Alfred's shop, hard at your labors?"

  Peter shrugged his newly broadened shoulders beneath his brown tunic and leather apron, the mark of his apprenticeship to Stanrudde's goldsmith. "He isn't in the shop this day, but at the market hall with the other councilmen. That's how I knew you'd come. Mistress Ann sent me to him with a message, and I met Theobald in the green. Since our shop is in this direction, I thought I'd wait to greet you." He shifted to stand closer to the horse. "Mama, now that you have returned, will you stay?" There was the barest hint of hope in his voice.

  Guilt again twisted in Johanna. However much her retreat into the convent had hurt Peter, watching his parents locked in their hidden and hateful war did him far worse damage. Now that he no longer lived at home, Johanna saw no reason to continue in the situation. Nor would she. She shook her head. "You know I cannot."

  Pain flashed through Peter's blue eyes then his face lost all expression. Johanna patted the yet childish roundness of his cheek. "It’s better this way, my little love. Know you, I am counting the hours until Eastertide when you come to the priory and we have a true visit," she said so
ftly. "Now, be off with you while I go to see what it is your father requires of me."

  As he stared up at her, Peter's mouth tightened, the sadness in his gaze growing. Of a sudden, he was a boy no longer. "Mama, you must have a care. Papa was acting strangely when I visited last week."

  Johanna leaned back into her saddle to peer down at him, a quirk of worry taking root in her. "Is it drink?" she asked, trying her best to gentle the question, as if in doing so she could avoid reminding Peter that his father was slowly losing himself to wine and ale.

  Again, Peter lifted his shoulders, his eyes shifting uneasily from her to the row of houses that lined the lane. He released her palfrey's bridle and stepped back from the horse's side. "Nay, he drank only a little. Rather, he smiled often to himself, as if cherishing secrets. When he spoke of you, it was to call you whore. What is wrong with him, Mama? Why is he doing this?" His words were a quiet, aching cry and tears sparked in his eyes as he betrayed one parent to warn the other. In the next moment, as if the pain were more than he could bear, he turned away from her and raced down the lane.

  Stanrudde

  Two hours past None

  The eve of Saint Agnes's Day, 1197

  Johanna watched Peter go. No doubt he meant to find some place to hide where he could indulge himself in emotions no longer appropriate to a lad his age. Hatred for Katel stirred anew in her. How dare he misuse their son by speaking ill of her before him. Damn Katel. Damn her for believing he would ever let her leave him. What if he'd used her absence to create some new way to torment her? She turned her horse toward the market square and home.

  It wasn't far to the city's center. Stanrudde's small green was where the unemployed came to be hired, goods were measured against the standard, trade infractions were judged, and merchants pilloried. The city's market hall stood at the wee square's far end. Although taller and wider than the houses on the square's other sides, it looked much the same with its wooden walls stretching upward into a thatched roof. This year's unending chill and persistent moisture, whether rain, snow, or today's sleet, had dulled the building's whitewash to the same gray as the clouds overhead.

  As Johanna brought her palfrey to a halt next to Theobald and the menservants, Katel's agent shot her a scathing glance. She ignored him to look at the armed men gathered before the hall. Save for their captain who was a professional soldier, the town’s guard, Stanrudde's policing force, was drawn on a rotating basis from the city's young and fit. They were a motley group, some in padded cloth vests, others in leather hauberks. The only thing they had in common, beyond the swords fast buckled at their sides, were their bored expressions as they watched their betters argue. All twelve of the council members stood near the pillory, worrying among them the issue of the hungry. Just now, the crippled wool merchant was violently protesting the idea of driving the starving beyond the city walls while the big smith insisted the crowd was too big to be controlled.

  It was with ease that Johanna found her husband among them. Katel was the shortest and roundest of his peers. Once, long ago, her husband had been a comely man, slender of build, with golden hair, clear-cut features, and fine dark brown eyes. Now, at six and forty, some fifteen years her senior, his years of overindulging in drink had left his skin unnaturally red and his nose bulbous. His eyes and mouth were trapped in piggish folds of fat, while his hair had thinned and grown lighter still, making him appear full bald beneath his cap when he was not.

  Held in place by a massive gold chain, Katel's gray cloak parted far enough to reveal he wore his maroon samite tunic beneath it, the one embroidered in precious metal threads. Johanna sneered. It was a good thing he wore his thicker cloak, the one lined in squirrel fur. Only that garment was wide enough to conceal the patchwork at his gown's seams; it had been altered many times to accommodate its owner's ever widening girth as Katel could not afford to replace it.

  Scorn died. Their gowns and jewels were all that now remained of the wealth Katel had once commanded. Over the last years, his drinking had caused his trade to suffer and prosperity to slip through his fingers. This year, what little profit he'd earned had been eaten in maintaining the sham of wealth or lost through poor investment. Had it not been for the income from the properties Johanna's sire had bound in trust for Peter, they might well have stood with the starving before the abbey.

  "Master Katel, your wife has rejoined us," Theobald called when he deemed he'd waited long enough for his master's notice. "Shall I escort her home?"

  Katel turned, a soft smile on his face. Johanna's hatred set to simmering all over again. It wasn't some plot Peter had seen, rather Katel gloating over how he could yet force his wife to his bidding when she'd vowed never again.

  It was with a mummer's finesse that her husband's face took on an expression of deep hurt. "Why there you are, Johanna. Wherever have you been these last months?" he called, his voice carrying in its tenor tones the sound of a docile and loving husband who nobly bore grave insult.

  Stunned by his wholly unexpected words, Johanna's eyes flew wide. From all around the square, shutters squealed as they opened to let folk peer past the panels at her. So too, did the guard and Stanrudde's most important men turn to look. They all stared at the woman they thought was Stanrudde's richest wife, waiting to hear what wrong it was she'd done.

  Sixteen years of Katel made Johanna almost as able a mummer as he. She bowed her head in the perfect portrayal of a meek housewife. "Husband, how come you to ask so strange a question?" she cried with just the right note of feminine distress. "You know full well that I have lived within the walls of a convent for these past months."

  "If that is so, then why did the lady prioress write to complain you'd left their house?" Katel asked, the quiet hurt in his voice ringing around the square. The unspoken implication of adultery weighed in his every syllable.

  Johanna flinched. Never once in all the years of her marriage had she considered an adulterous liaison. She dared not. If she was to stray from her wedding vows and be discovered, the terms of her father's will gave Katel control of the properties entrusted for Peter. It was to guarantee her son had something to inherit when he came of age that kept Johanna faithful to her vows. That, and the pleasure of using her virtue to stand between Katel and the wealth he wanted. Now she carefully raised her head to look at him.

  Katel watched her, deep satisfaction glowing in his eyes. Her husband was waiting for a protest of innocence. Johanna hesitated. But he'd not actually accused her. If she protested it might seem a guilty outburst.

  Her gaze strayed to those around him. Even though a prioress and all her nuns would swear that Johanna had held close within their walls for the past five months, Katel's broad hint had already dirtied her good name. Whether high or low, every man watched her in new suspicion, while eying her husband in pity as a man obviously too dense to add the sums and see his wife was cuckolding him.

  "My pardon," Katel said to his fellow council members, "I would see my wife safely settled within mine own walls. You will excuse me?" The loving tones of his voice made him out to be the perfect cuckold: the husband who, for his heart's sake, could barely understand why his wife had left him in the first place much less recognize how she now sinned against him. Johanna damned him again and again. Was he so far gone in his hatred for her that he no longer cared how such an accusation might hurt Peter?

  Too heavy to mount with ease, the spice merchant turned to walk at his troop's head as they made their way down Market Lane. With the need to protect her child and herself burning in her heart, Johanna turned her horse to follow him. The moment they were private she'd give him the sharp edge of her tongue over this game of his, whatever it was.

  Taller than any of the buildings around it, the house built by Walter of Stanrudde had once been a home, the source of happiness and pride for Johanna. But back then, the house with its fine slate roof had sat openly on the lane’s edge, no wall between it and the street. No longer. Katel wanted no one seeing into his private
domain. To that end he’d erected a barrier made up of line upon line of round, grayish stones, some whole, others split to reveal their glossy black hearts, framed by squared columns of limestone. With that wall hiding the house’s face, all that could be seen from the street was cold stone and bitter mortar. Her marriage to Katel had poisoned what had once been haven and happiness for her.

  Her husband strode within the gate, but only Theobald and Johanna rode in behind him; the five menservants who had accompanied them rode on, taking their worn mounts to the spice merchant's larger stable, located just outside the city walls. The one behind whom Leatrice, Johanna's maid, rode paused just long enough to allow the young woman to dismount before continuing on. As Katel retreated across the courtyard, seeking respite from the wind in the shelter of the forebuilding, the small square outthrust of stone that enclosed the house's external stairway, Theobald swung down from his saddle.

  Johanna stayed where she’d stopped her mount just inside the courtyard, not yet willing to give herself up to Katel's control. From long habit, she glanced toward the small kitchen shed that stood at the far end of the house. No smoke flowed from beneath the peaked vent that perched atop its thatched roof. Why would Wymar, their cook and sometimes her only friend within these walls, have let the kitchen's fire die? Curiosity was brief against the larger matters presently at hand.

  Leatrice came to a stop near Johanna’s horse, her cloak held tightly around her. Framed by thick hair so dark a brown it was almost black, the maid’s pretty face was solemn as she gazed upon her master. Then she glanced at her mistress. Johanna saw the reflection of Agnes’s misery in Leatrice’s brown eyes and shook her head, finding no triumph in the girl's forthcoming ruin. Despite Leatrice's arrogance, Johanna rather liked her. This lass had a boldness all Katel's other women lacked.

  "Why, here is my little sweetheart," the spice merchant called in friendly greeting to his paramour, who had accompanied her mistress to the convent. "I have missed you these five months. Come kiss me in welcome!"