And now the season was changing...
But Matthew had not returned, which caused further puzzlement. Had he been toying with her once again, thinking that after he stirred her emotions, he could disappear for another two years? She felt like kicking something in frustration and had to refrain from snapping at her fellows during the day or her maid, who had returned from London, at night.
When she tossed upon her bed, Cicily, who slept on a pallet tucked in the alcove, would call, "Be ye sick? Have ye a fever? Are ye in need of a sleeping potion?"
If only Margery could cease the infernal racing of her mind. She wished she'd taken Fulco the Smithy's hand when he'd offered and swung up beside him on his forge wagon. They would have travelled to parts unknown where Matthew Hart would never find her. She would prefer a lifetime of sleeping under a wagon to this torment.
It was all too confusing to contemplate.
Yet contemplate it she did.
As a widow I am allowed a blessed measure of freedom. But what does "freedom" even mean? What do I really seek? Not to be a man's property? To be shed of emotional entanglements? To be able to walk through life without loving too much or hurting too deeply or being too disappointed when my husband or paramour degenerates into my captor, or becomes cruel or indifferent or unfaithful?
On this third night following their meeting, Margery crossed once again to the window, which she'd left unshuttered. No rider darkened the road.
I do not even know how to define love, she thought. She examined the concept as if it were a multi-faceted jewel or mayhap a curious creature that had crawled out from the muck to be poked and prodded and explored. She re-examined her and Matthew's years together, particularly those last miserable days. Everything following Limoges had been one long descent into darkness. And after the death of their king Edward, the final plunge into a waking nightmare.
I cannot go back there. When their relationship had been crushed amidst the weight of Matthew's melancholia. Their lives had been intricately woven together for so very long, but if viewed objectively, the warped and twisted threads far outnumbered the perfect.
Cicily stirred on her pallet and shifted, causing the straw to rustle.
"Oh, Grandmere," Margery whispered. She'd taken to addressing her grandmother rather than a bevy of the usual saints. "What should I do?"
* * *
The next even, when she returned from Aurum, Matthew's stallion was tied in front of her cottage.
Margery hesitated. So now here it was. "Give me strength," she prayed to all and sundry.
Matthew opened the garden gate, careful to make certain that Margery's gander, Lovey, did not slip free, and met her at the front door. Lovey protested with a great squawk and spreading of his wings before strutting back to a far corner of the backside.
"I was beginning to think I dreamed you," Margery said, hoping that her frown belied the frantic pattering of her heart.
"I wanted to give you time to think. And for my jaw to heal."
Margery opened the cottage door and reluctantly gestured for him to enter. In passing, Matthew's arm brushed hers. Cicily had been arranging bread, cheese, and wine on a table near the hearth, but when they entered, she greeted him with a curtsy before discreetly withdrawing.
"Might I serve you something?" Margery maneuvered away from Matthew toward the table. "Wine?"
"Aye."
She poured from a jug into a goblet, pleased that her hands remained steady. When she extended the goblet their fingers brushed; instinctively she drew back.
Matthew gazed deeply into her eyes. She was first to look away.
He laughed. "Am I going to have to woo you, pluck you a tune on my lute? Will you reduce me to that?"
"I've heard you sing. And your musical abilities are even worse." From outside, Lovey squawked in protest of something. "Rather like my gander."
"I would be insulted if you did not speak true." He drank deeply. "So let us dispense with the music and get to the heart of it."
The window shutters were open and the kitchen-living area was pleasantly cool. Cicily had arranged flower bouquets on the table and various chests while Margery had woven hawthorn boughs above the door, creating a pleasant mingling of fragrances.
"Two years is a very long time," Margery said. She gazed into that face that had once been so dear and remained so very familiar. And which no longer belonged to her.
"We've been parted longer."
"That we have," she agreed.
More than six years when she'd been married to Simon Crull and Matthew had been in Bordeaux with his mistress. Many months during campaigns. But their last parting had been different. They'd been married in all but name and both had agreed their relationship must end. It wasn't that their love had died exactly. There had been no looks or words that conveyed the message, "I do not love you enough," "I do not love you at all," and "I am so sorry I no longer care."
She worried the hem of her sleeve, not meeting his gaze. The room, which was large enough under other circumstances, seemed uncomfortably close. "Mayhap a love that simply crumbles away is less sad than a love whose heart remains beating but because of events and tragedies and challenges has been irretrievably damaged."
"Is that how you view us? For I do not." Matthew took a step forward as if to embrace her, but he merely crossed to the dining table to place his empty goblet beside the evening repast. Then he returned to her side. Margery retreated to the window overlooking the road, darkening with evening's shadow. Carts rumbled past, loaded with barrels, probably the last leavings from Fordwich's port. A stray cat, tail twitching, crossed behind the carts to disappear beneath a hedgerow.
How to say what was in her heart, if she even knew what resided there. "Sometimes the very things that draw people together are the things that ultimately drive us apart. Everything that we shared... the differences in our stations. So much always seemed to come between us."
Matthew came up behind her. If she leaned back, she would graze his chest. She fancied she could feel the heat radiating from his body. Do not touch me. Do not.
"We can conjure a thousand reasons to remain separate and think ourselves into a headache," Matthew said. "I'd rather make it very simple."
"You never were one for complications."
"I've had two years to ponder my troubles.'Twas painful but I faced down my demons and I am no longer tormented."
She turned to face him, her gaze lingering on his face. "I can see that."
His every movement, word, gesture, the very look of him told her so. What changes had marked his absence she could not say, but the signs were unmistakable.
"And now I am here to claim what is mine. You are mine. You always have been. As I am yours. We can fight it all we please or we can accept it and step forward together."
"How cocksure you are, my lord." A flicker of anger arose and she felt her cheeks flush. "I think I'd rather not be claimed by anyone."
He smiled. "You've long known I am not nimble with words. I did not mean to offend. I am simply stating fact, though mayhap inelegantly."
Voices drifted from the open window—Clarice conversing with Bobby Carter, snatches from a hymn, 'In dulci jubilo, Nun singet und seid froh...' No doubt from pilgrims seeking shelter beyond Canterbury, which would be emptied of rooms. Soon church bells would ring Vespers, soon Fordwich, Sturry and the countryside would draw into itself like a dog bedding down for the night.
"You know well enough how laid low I was," Matthew continued. "But now that I've sorted through my past, I no longer fear the future; I embrace it."
Margery's eyes filled with sudden tears. She felt an ache in her chest that made breathing difficult. "I canna do this," she whispered. "I can see that you've changed. But so have I. So has... England." Dropping all pretense, she whispered, "This is an ancient war, my love." The term of endearment slipped out unbidden. "'Twas not only Limoges that drove us apart. Do you not remember, our last months together? All we did was fight and wo
und each other. I'll not go back to that."
"Nor I. We need not. We will not."
He brushed away a tear from her cheek. She shook her head as if to warn him against trespassing further. "'Tis more than that."
How to explain? All her life she'd straddled two worlds, trying to reconcile one against the other. She'd been like a weathervane, bobbing this way and that, depending on whether she was with Matthew and his kind or Thurold and John Ball. Only recently had she thought herself freed of that ancient conflict. But had she really reached a resolution or had it been easy to think so when she didn't have an all too human reminder standing before her?
"When you were gone I found it so easy to fit into my various roles, slippery as an eel, darting in and out. But with you here, I am afraid that, despite our best intentions, we'll become stuck in those old patterns and grievances, and end up as miserable as before."
He stroked her cheek with the knuckles of a hand. This time she did not pull away. Rather she suppressed the urge to reach out to rest her palm against the side of his face as she'd done countless times, to smooth the lock of hair that forever tumbled over his forehead.
"Life can be simple, Meg." His voice was low-pitched, persuasive. How dark his eyes in the shadowed room, how dear his countenance. "Just toss all the dead weight overboard and say, 'This is what I choose. This is what I will fight for.'."
"We cannot resurrect the dead."
"Our relationship is not dead. 'Twas just a bit dormant." He stood so close now she had to crane her neck to be able to see his expression. "Let us go to Cumbria. I will retire forever from court—"
"Hah! There is always a war to call you out—"
"Foreign wars no longer hold any appeal."
But there could be wars much closer to home. What if all those decades of John Ball and Thurold and others stirring their cauldron of grievances would finally cause it to bubble over? What had Ernald the apprentice said, a reckoning?
She suppressed a shiver of foreboding. "You will always trod a far grander stage where events, rather than your wishes, will dictate your actions. Who knows what you might be called to do and you will respond as you always have. 'Tis your duty and your obligation. It cannot be otherwise. But that puts you at odds with any relationship we might think to build together. I am tired of being hostage to events."
Matthew waved a dismissive hand. "But that is the nature of life. Things ever happen that we cannot control. And once we make peace with that, much of the frustration ends."
It was on the tip of her tongue to say, "What a philosopher you've become," but why mock him when he spoke true? It was just disconcerting to hear her man of action speak in such an introspective fashion. A stranger had indeed returned to her.
Matthew's arms settled upon her waist. When he pulled her close this time, she allowed it. He kissed the crown of her head. "For so long I fled all thought of the past, of all the sins I'd committed, the mistakes I made. But when I finally ceased running..." He told her about his withdrawal to the shores of Lake Winandermere, about his struggles, about the appearance of the great stag, and about his resolution.
"I have committed terrible acts," Matthew said. "But I did as my prince commanded, as our priests command before we go to war and they absolve us of all sins, past, present and future. I have always done what I was charged to do. If I am wrong then our society is wrong and that cannot be. I am a knight with a set of duties and obligations. We each have them. If I am a man I cannot be a hawk. We are what we are. You are. I am. Your brother is. John Ball is. Even Lawrence Ravenne is. I have accepted who I am, and what I have done. I am not a philosopher; I do not know why there is evil in the world or whether committing evil deeds has made me evil. When I hear such matters debated I can never get to the rightness of them. But I have come to my own conclusions and I can live with them and I have forgiven myself. 'Tis enough for me."
Margery leaned back in his arms to better gauge the meaning of his words. She felt off-kilter, as if she'd just stepped from a well-worn path onto uncharted territory. For this man she did not know, these words, these observations would not have emerged from the Matthew Hart of two years past. She wanted to lecture him, shake a finger at him and say, "How can you be at peace when your soul is so stained?" Not so much to seek an answer but to poke him as she would a caged animal in order to provoke a reaction. For if she criticized him, she knew exactly how he would respond. That pattern of behavior was familiar, and as destructive as it had been, they could both have played their respective parts without thinking. She condemnatory; he defensive. Or vice versa.
But if she believed Matthew had changed—and she did—why would she seek to wound him? That was not love or even the kindness she would extend to a casual acquaintance. And was it not the height of arrogance to lecture Matthew Hart on his sins, when her soul was just as stained? Weren't they all God's broken creatures seeking mercy?
The sounds drifting from the windows—villeins chatting as they returned from the fields, a child's laughter, the distant bleating of sheep, the even song of various birds, the squeaking of a laggard cart and jangle of harnesses—all faded until it was just they two. "'Tis all happening too fast," she said. "I need time to think."
"I am forty-three years old. At times I can only dimly remember that other Matthew Hart. Sometimes I cannot fathom his actions or some of his choices. But I do not hate him. I have compassion for him, as I do for all of us. Do I deserve what I most crave, which is a quiet life with you? I do not know. Only you can answer that. But 'tis why I am here. To ask you to return to me, to us. Marry me, Meg. I would give Serill a name. I would spend my days with you. I do love you. I always have. "
Wasn't it just like life, to be so certain of the future and then to have it all upended in a moment? Marriage? Removed from all that was familiar? Being swept away into the wilds of some unholy land? Thinking to build a new love on the fault line of an old? Throwing herself into a cage? Or embracing a second chance for happiness?
"What say you, Meg?" When she did not respond, he said, "I will wait as long as it takes for an answer."
Margery still did not speak, but in her heart she already knew.
Chapter 17
Spring 1381, Kent
When describing the English character, the court chronicler, Jean Froissart, wrote that Englishmen—women being too unimportant for inclusion—were of a "haughty disposition, hot-tempered and quickly moved to anger, difficult to pacify and bring to sweet reason. They take delight in battles and slaughter. They are extremely covetous of the possessions of others, and are incapable by nature of joining in friendship or alliance with a foreign nation. There are not more untrustworthy people under the sun than the middle classes in England. However, the gentlefolk are upright and loyal by nature while the ordinary people are cruel, perfidious and disloyal... they will not allow them (the upper classes) to have anything—even an egg or a chicken—without paying for it."
And later, when Froissart chronicled the Great Rising, he said that it arose in the "mean season." Actually, the final burnishing of the Peasant's Revolt occurred around Lent—that stretch of weeks between Shrovetide and Whitsunday of 1381. This was when mendicant friars traditionally preached their public sermons in English at every preaching cross, and regular clergy in churches across the land—all with one message, that Christ died for the sins of all men, not just a privileged few. The Easter season was second only to Christmas in merrymaking and holidays for the common folk that Froissart had dismissed as "cruel, perfidious and disloyal." It was during these resultant gatherings that the message was spread and de facto leaders emerged. These men were generally involved in some form of local governance, were tradesmen and largely literate. Thus they could read from secret missives and provide a uniform message which helped account for the seeming spontaneity of the revolution, but was actually the result of a more sophisticated network. Sparks of discontent there had been a plenty. Now the sparks would catch hold with results that would
reverberate long past the mean season of 1381.
* * *
'Twas not traditional to be married during Lent, and Margery and Matthew had long made plans for a mid-summer wedding in Cumbria. In the nine months they'd been re-united they had returned to London and resided at Hart's Place, but now Margery happily anticipated retiring to Cumbria Castle. From Matthew's descriptions, her previous imagining of his earldom had metamorphosed to a place of unspoiled beauty, away from the pollution of London and endless crowds, and divorced from political and court intrigue. Perhaps as important, living in Cumbria would shield her from the disapproval, even scandal, that would inevitably accompany the Earl of Cumbria's marriage to a woman so far beneath him in station.
For Margery, the months passed in a pleasant blur. She found herself falling in love all over again, found herself behaving sometimes like a moonstruck youth. Matthew was the man she'd long loved, but he was also different. There was a calmness at his core, a peace that drew her, everyone, it seemed, in a way that his more youthful cocksureness had not. He could be just as formidable a knight, as commanding a lord, but his temper seldom flared, he seemed more accepting of challenges large and small, and he was certainly more concerned with her welfare, her happiness than the Matthew of old. Her faerie knight, but more than her faerie knight. An old love blended with a new and Margery increasingly counted herself blessed.
It was not until late April of 1381 that they were ready to travel north for the wedding. In order to be unencumbered by baggage carts and pack horses, they had sent most of their household possessions ahead to Cumbria. They planned on a leisurely journey, with a stop at Kenilworth where Serill was lodged, and then on to Bury St. Edmunds to visit Matthew's sister. Or more precisely have her visit them. Elizabeth Ravenne would then accompany them to Cumbria Castle, though her husband would not. Matthew had finally confronted Lawrence Ravenne with the murder of Margery's mother, an act that Ravenne had first denied. Had Alice Watson's death been so unimportant that he could not remember slicing her near in two and leaving her crumpled in the shadows of a village lane while her children looked on?
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