by Anne Carsley
“When you went to battle you said there was much I needed to know about you. What are these things? Does your departure have to do with them?”
James looked directly at her but it was as if he did not see her so veiled were his eyes. “You also said that these did not matter. That you loved me in spite of them. Have you forgotten?”
“I do love you.” Recklessly she threw her arms around him but he stood still in them. “And you, James, what do you feel?”
“This is pointless. We leave at daybreak. I shall ride on to London and make preparations. Then I will make formal farewell to you.”
In front of great numbers of people so that there would be no chance for intimate conversation. Katherine knew that for the moment she was beaten. Her legs began to tremble and she put out a hand to James. Hesitantly, he took it and helped her to a chair. His hand lingered on her back and when she stole a glance at him, she saw that his muscle in the cheek jerked convulsively as it ever did when he was agitated.
Softly she said, “I am weary now, James. Your announcement took me by surprise. Of course, you must go if you wish it. Will you come back later and read to me? My eyes grow tired so easily. Bring your brandy, too, I think a drop would hearten me.”
“I must be alone to think.” He was gruff but his eyes were haunted.
“Please.”
He yielded as she had known he would. Whatever the burden he bore she meant to discover it this night and the brandy was potent. She knew with a strange intuition that James was fleeing from himself. She knew clearly that he loved her as much as she loved him and this gave her the courage to fight for him. Whatever the night might bring it would be well worth the battle joined.
She called to her maid, “The Lord James will take supper with me tonight. Make me fair.”
Chapter 34
The Garden of the Rose
Katherine wore a gown of rose and silver that night; the bodice was cut very low and her breasts swelled out of it. Her hair fell over her shoulders and was held back by a circlet of pearls. Her eyes were brilliant with excitement. Her body swelled more with the child but she looked a full blown rose.
The table was laid by the fire, sleet tapped the window and wine stood ready. A deep cup was placed for James. Her book, “The Romance of the Rose,” lay near at hand. The candles flickered and trembled in the faint draft.
Katherine remembered the camaraderie of the past few weeks. A real friendship had grown between James and herself as they played at draughts, talked of books and art, philosophy and religion, God and Satan. They had disagreed but always there was the delight of words between them. There had been streams of poetry quoted, she recalled, in Latin, French and English. He had helped her downstairs, bathed her forehead, found a young boy in the village to sing her the ballads she loved and had, himself, made up outlandish tales to set her laughing. One day Roger and Sir Anselm had come to visit and she had coerced James into playing at the courts of love with them, ruling on each other’s idea of love with hearty gusto. It had been an elaborate and silly game, but pleasurable. James had laughed as much as any of them and at the end, she had seen his eyes flicker with the beginnings of passion and knew that the same light was in her own. It had been held in abeyance, a sweet surety against the future that she would not willingly relinquish.
The door opened and James entered carrying a large leather traveling flask of brandy. He had already partaken, she noticed from the wary look in his eyes.
“God’s greeting, lady. I cannot stay long as you know.”
Katherine persuaded him to join her in a little of the soup and fresh fish, saw to it that his cup remained filled with the potent brandy, and drank from her own in a sip at a time. The conversation was light and meaningless. Weather, the possibility of snow for Christmas, the travelers now at the inn.
Soon she saw that James was growing more at ease. He tugged off his outdoor mantle and loosened his velvet doublet, then said quite genially to her, “Where is the book? I will read now.”
She lay back on the bed and watched while he read in a somewhat slurred tone of the stylized formalities of the garden of the rose, the dangers which beset the lover and anguish which love caused him. Under it all lay the contrast of the woman who duped and was duped. She had chosen a section which deliberately excoriated women even while declaring their necessity. James read and the color flamed into his face. He drank three quick gulps of brandy, looked at Katherine who lay, the very image of woman, on the bed.
Another several lines and he threw the book across the room, then swung to Katherine who sat up.
“You read drivel, Madam. Can you not read our good English authors?”
Katherine said slowly, “What troubles you, James?”
“Nothing, nothing, I tell you.” He sat down before the fire and poured more brandy. His eyes were dark with anger and the pulse throbbed in his temple. His mouth was drawn down on one side in a cruel expression that Katherine found difficult to reconcile with the man who had been so tender with her in the past days. “I must go.” He drained the contents of the cup and looked at her as if he did not see her.
Katherine could guess at the processes invoked by the closeness that had been between them, the danger that he must feel from it for James had had no real love or friendship with a woman since Margaret of Burgundy. She thought of the withdrawal that always followed any warmth and passion, the strange way he could make passionate love to her body and court her mind only to chill her in their next meeting, the declaration of love between them, and now this decision to leave. He was threatened and he knew only one way to escape. Katherine knew with all her powerful intuition that this night could save or shatter their future.
James stood up, swaying slightly as he looked about for his sword. His gaze lit on the offending book which he had tossed aside in his anger. He looked at Katherine who had moved closer to the door.
“Surely, madam, there are better things for a woman with child to read. The library of Hunsdale is at your disposal, is it not? I forbid you to pursue such lewd writings. They are offensive!”
“It is not the book that disturbs you, James.”
Her quiet words seemed to enrage him and he went again to the brandy jug. His shaking hands caused some to spill and it took both to lift the cup to his mouth.
“What do you mean, madam? I vow, I grow weary of this atmosphere of heat and insinuation. You forget a woman’s place and seek to meddle in the affairs of men. Do you seek to hold me when I have sworn to go?” His drunken anger was growing and feeding upon itself rapidly.
Katherine came to him, put both hands on his shoulders and held him, letting him feel the small thrust of the child between them. He set the brandy down and put one hand on her stomach. His dark gaze softened and Katherine knew that the time had come.
“Tell me about Margaret, James.” Her voice was very soft over the crackling of the flames. “She is the reason you wish to leave me now. Tell me.”
He pushed her back from him and began to curse, the words rising up and spitting out like venom. He paced the floor and kicked at the rushes in his way. Yet more brandy was consumed until he began to sway from it. His face was a mask of savagery.
Katherine did not truly think that he would hurt her. It was a risk she knew she must take. Sir Anselm had told her the story of the walled-off wound and how the man had died of it. Were there not such wounds of the spirit and the mind? Had this not happened to her, at least in part, with Antony and his banishment?
She had earlier bolted and locked the door. It was unlikely that James was sober enough to be able to undo both. Now he sat down and began a long diatribe on loyalty which ended with a study of the ancestors of the deceased Duke of Buckingham who had helped his prince to the throne and then rebelled against him.
“How did you know about her?” James spoke in a low voice but the air was shatteringly full of tension.
Katherine forebore to say that much of the tale was known in one vers
ion or another. James must retain his pride if they were to have any future together at all. She said, “When you were ill and in the delirium, you called for her. Tell me about her.”
“No!” It was a hoarse cry of anger but Katherine heard the desperation behind it.
She swung her body before the door just as he reached it and lifted his hand to strike her from it. They faced each other, panting, in a confrontation that might destroy not only their relationship but themselves as individuals. Katherine had wept into her pillow the night before but, as she had long ago learned and had come to believe even more of late, deities might be besought but the individual must help himself. So it had come to this.
Now all caution deserted Katherine and she screamed as loudly as any fishwife, “You will! I demand it as my right! Go where you will and do as you like, but you shall tell me!”
It was as if she stood again in Peymar Castle and saw his wound rip open in front of her. He turned from her and began to beat steadily on the wall as he cursed such oaths as she had never heard. Katherine did not move but she risked one more sentence and there it must rest. She could endure no more, the first soft cramps were beginning and she knew she must sit down.
“Purge it from you, Jamie, release it and have done. Live with me in the present.”
Hell’s own fire looked at her from his eyes. His face contorted and twisted. One hand went over his stomach where the old wound had been and Katherine guessed that it had not hurt half as much as this. His words began, slowly, haltingly, full of the curses that seemed as much release as the assault on the door had been. She could not understand half that he said for it was muttered into the sleeve that he held over his face.
Katherine eased back from the door and took the short steps to the bed where she sank down with a gasp of relief. Poor babe! If it survived this night, there might be hope for a future. It would be horror indeed to survive a witchcraft plot and miscarry in a fight for one’s own husband.
“Are you all right?” James spoke to her in normal tones, albeit somewhat slurred from the brandy. The devastating rage was gone but his eyes were dead.
Katherine’s head whirled but her voice was steady. “Tell me.”
This time when the words began, they did not stop. He began in a monotone, as if relating another’s tale. His head sank into his hands and hid his expression as the words came.
“I was twenty when I went to Burgundy in the service of King Edward. While there I fell in love with Margaret Edberton, one of the highest ranking ladies of the court. So did she with me or so I thought then. She was delicate with golden hair and blue eyes, the fairest woman on this earth. We were betrothed even though my brother was at the time Lord of Hunsdale and busy wastreling away our birthright. The wedding date was set and preparations began. In my happiness I did not notice that Margaret began to look pale and drawn. She made reasons to avoid my company and her words were sometimes sharp.
One night I walked with her in the garden and began to caress her. She pulled away and began to cry saying that I was too demanding and forceful. Had I no respect for her? I apologized profusely. She stood there in the moonlight, all the woman I wanted in the world, and when she finally deigned to smile at me, I found the world well won.
In the days that followed I behaved with great decorum toward her and she grew warmer toward me. I began to believe that I was forgiven. Often I rode out with friends who urged me to bed others but Margaret was the only woman I hungered for. She spent much time with her maids and with the troubadour, Miles Arcam, who had recently come to court. He was a husky, earthy sort of man who seemed better a soldier than a singer. The ladies were forever seeking his company and Margaret said he made the time pass more swiftly for her.
I went in search of her before the evening meal one day but no one seemed to know where she was so I went for a ride instead. On the way back I stopped by a copse where we had often rested from our rides in the past. I meant to sit there and dream of her.
I was stopped by a cry. It was Margaret in the arms of the troubadour. Her bodice was open to his hands, her mouth swollen with his kisses. This was not the first time for their bodies were practiced with each other. I threw myself upon him in rage but he fled. Margaret began to weep, saying that he had forced her. I remember our words as though they were etched in acid.
“Ah, no, Lady. You behaved worse than any trull.”
She faced me then and the beautiful face which had reminded me of the Virgin’s in the cathedral was hell’s own. She said, “My high and mighty sprig, did you think I loved you or ever could? You with your pewling sense of honor and your meager caresses. A boy’s hesitancy! I could not bear your touch. One finger of Miles was worth it all. You are right, I have lain with him many times.”
I went mad then. I threw her to the ground and took her as she lay, with her skirts tossed up and her white thighs bare. Her breasts bore my teeth marks and her face the print of my hand. She lay there in all the fragility I had loved and sought to protect, looking up at me with those eyes the color of Mary’s own veil.
I said, “I will have no harlot to wife. The Duke of Burgundy shall be told and I sail for England within the week.”
She laughed and her fingers beckoned me as she said, “Had you come to me this way early on, I should not have sought the troubadour!”
I did everything foul to her then that I had learned from the harlots and my friends with more exotic tastes. It was a night from hell and she but cried the more passionately in her eagerness. I rose from her loins in the light of morning and cursed her with all the skill I had. Then I went to the castle and locked myself in my room with the brandy.
When I emerged at the end of two days and nights I was sick enough to die, both in body and soul. They came, the priests and the best of my friends, to tell me most carefully that Margaret, that high-born beauty, had run away with the troubadour. She had been seen leaving. No reason was given but they assumed that I had taken her honor and that she had not had the courage to kill herself. I told myself I did not care and believed it.
I left Burgundy in a quiet disgrace, knowing that I had offended Duke Charles and King Edward, but I did not really care. Two years later word came of Margaret’s death in Bordeaux of the plague. Her father had died within the year. Thereafter I had judged all women by one faithless one but it did not matter: they had but one use.”
His voice dragged to a halt. The tale had come with many spurts and halts. Now he lifted his head and looked into the tender eyes of his wife. The wildness was gone from him but his face was still ravaged and white.
“Do you love her still?” Katherine spoke very quietly in the room.
“I loved with a young man’s adoration. She cast all that in the muck and ruined my pride. Part of me will always remember both.”
He stood up then and reeled with exhaustion as he drained the last drop of brandy. Seconds later he lay full length in her bed, sleeping the sleep of exhaustion. Katherine took off her dress and joined him, holding the big body to her in a love that seemed to transcend any she had felt before. He fumbled closer to her in his drunken weariness and spoke so softly that she could not hear.
“Yes, my dear lord, I am here. Always.”
He put a hand on the rounding that was their child and soon they both slept.
In the morning light, James protested of his head, demanding to know what she had done to him with a simple request to read a silly tale of love.
Katherine laughed, “Does it hurt so much that you will give up brandy?”
“Ah, no. Well, what shall we do today?”
She probed, “You spoke of a trip to Italy or Spain yesterday, my lord.”
“So I did, but I have decided to remain with you if you wish my company.” He looked at her and his eyes were free of the shadow that had haunted them for so long. “I remember much of what I said to you last night, Katherine. I was drunk, of course, but I do not forget.”
“We need speak of it no more,
James. Let the past go.”
“I have lived there for so long. It will be hard but I will try.”
They put their arms around each other then and stood long in that pose before he tipped her face to his. “Call for the breakfast, Madam, I would lie with you.”
“The child! I cannot, Jamie.” She drew back from him and waited for the familiar downward quirk of his brows that always came when he was balked.
He saw and touched her in the tenderness that had always been there, though hidden by the bitterness of the past. “Foolish woman. I mean only to hold you both in my arms, that I may assure myself how lucky I am.”
Katherine looked at him and thought that by gambling all, she had won all. It might be that he would be forever wounded but their chance was greater now. He had told her nothing that she had not already known, either from his delirium or from Roger. It was simply the fact that he had broken free of the constricting silence and shared his agony with her. Not for the first nor the last time, Katherine blessed the fortune that had given her such a friend as Sir Anselm who had shown her the way.
“You are far from me, Kate.” James brought her face to his again using the name which he had used in their beginning.
“Never, Jamie. As close as your touch.”
They lay hours later in the big bed amid the bread and cheese crumbs as they sipped ale from the same horn cup. They played the games that lovers ever play, they explored the facets of their love. Katherine slapped at James with a lock of red brown hair and laughed at his pretended dodge.
“When did you first care for me, Jamie? As me, I mean, and not just as a body you wished to bed?”
“Ah, no, lady. You must answer first, that is the way of those who ask such questions.”
She laughed and acknowledged the truth of that. Because she loved him, she would not give him less than the truth. “In our first times together, Jamie, I think our fate was sealed but the mask of arrogance was ever there. But when you knelt before Lady Dorotea in kindness that day in the city of York and I saw your true caring for another, that day I began to love you.”