“It seems dangerous everywhere,” I said. “I felt – I had to be alone.”
“You sleep alone,” he pointed out. “I have given you my bed. And in truth, we are all of us always alone, whether we appreciate it or not.”
“It never feels like it,” I muttered. Peering up while lying flat, made it extremely difficult to talk.
“I told you once,” he said, “that you should cultivate the secret places in your mind. In those places you can be eternally solitary. You can dream all the dreams of your unenviable youth. You can escape pain.”
“But I didn’t escape pain,” I said, wishing I could sit up, wishing I could accuse him, retain my small dignity in defiance and demand all the explanations I longed for. “You tortured me anyway. You and the others.”
He kept staring down at me and now he frowned. “Then you should have learned the lesson well,” he said, “from now on never to wander unwatched.”
I tried to glare, but it was difficult with my chin stuck in the mud and my blushes vivid. “Please,” I said at last, “would you let me dress? And leave me, just for a moment?”
“No,” he said softly. “I will do neither.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “You’ve told me off. I apologise for going off alone. I’ve finished my bath so if you go home now, I’ll get dressed and hurry straight back to the house.”
“Not yet,” he said very softly. “You see, I had another reason for following you, for which I also need privacy.” Then he came and knelt beside me, one leg bent on the grassy bank. His gaze was intrusive and intense.
I squirmed away. I was horribly conscious of my naked back and my chin stuck incongruously in the grass. “You shouldn’t look at me like that,” I mumbled. “Once you told me you thought of me as a daughter but I’m not.”
“I know,” he said. “And it’s no longer the way I think of you. However, there is something that must be dealt with, whether you are embarrassed and I am discomforted, is of no matter. This has to be done.”
“I don’t owe you anything,” I muttered into the grass. “I’m not interested in doing anything you want me to.”
He smiled, though it was not a particularly pleasant smile. The taint of malice was, as usual, playing at the corners of his eyes. “You misunderstand.”
I waited, since I had no choice. But for a long time he looked across my shoulders down at the pool and its still waters now reflecting the rising sun. Finally I said, “Please. If you’d just let me put my cloak around me.”
“No,” he said, looking back suddenly at me as if he had just remembered I was still there. “Be quiet and listen to me. This is – important. You must answer my questions carefully and truthfully.”
“I don’t want to marry Walter,” I said into the pause.
He laughed, which offended me. “I know,” he said, “and that has nothing to do with the questions I need to ask.” He knew he had me trapped. I was far too timid to get up naked, and run. So I tried to look brave but then he surprised me. He said, “Tilda, tell me, your monthly courses, your woman’s bleeding, is this still regular? Have you noticed any delay or interruption?”
I was shocked, humiliated and angry. He had no right to ask such things. But Tilda was less squeamish and more practical. She demanded, “Why?”
“In the weeks since you returned from my castle, have you felt different in any way?” Vespasian asked, ignoring both my blushes and Tilda’s question. “Do you suffer attacks of nausea? Have you felt physically changed? Have you experienced any bodily sensation that you do not understand, internally or externally?”
“Yes,” said Tilda bluntly. “I’m covered in scars and blisters. My hand’s deformed. I’ve been beaten and burned and whipped and cut. Most of the pain’s finally faded, but not all of it. How could I feel the same? How could I not feel different?”
It was the first time she’d been so direct with him. It sounded accusatory as she meant it to. Yet he was quite unashamed, and persisted with his questions, staring at me under hooded lids.
“In any other way? More intimate ways?” he demanded. “And concerning your woman’s bleeding? Be precise.”
Tilda had started shivering. “No,” I said. “I won’t say anything – intimate – not to you.” She was increasingly angry and I encouraged her.
Vespasian smiled. “Then,” he said, “you must sit up.”
“Certainly not,” I said.
“But I must insist,” said Vespasian and the malice was back. “If you do not do so willingly, then I warn you, I shall force you.”
I really didn’t understand and I was furious. “You want to torture me all over again?”
“No,” he said, very, very softly. Yet his voice seemed unwilling, as if he now said what he had not intended to tell me. “This is not an arbitrary demand,” he murmured. “I need to know if you have conceived a child. Tilda, I must know if you are pregnant.”
I sighed. It began to make sense. I could have simply said I wasn’t, but Tilda was hopelessly ignorant. “It’s not possible,” she said, hanging her head.
“Then sit up,” said Vespasian, “and afterwards I will let you dress.”
Very slowly, Tilda brought her knees up beneath her, legs tight together, damp from the swim and the dewy grass. She let her hair fall over her shoulders and folded her arms across her breasts. Then she sat up straight. I glared back at Vespasian as he gazed at me.
“Lower your arms,” he said.
Reluctantly, I uncrossed my arms and clasped my hands in my lap. I knew I shivered and my nipples were taut with cold. His stare was momentarily intrusive. Then he smiled and reaching down, caught up the bundle of my clothes and tossed them to me. “Now you may dress,” he said. His voice had lightened.
He continued to watch me as I dressed. I struggled with the ties, aware of his eyes on me until the final buckling of my belt. “Now explain,” I said as forcefully as I could. “You owe me an explanation. You have to tell me everything.”
“I will not tell you everything,” he said. “But I will tell you some of it, if you wish.”
Fully dressed again, I hoped my face would begin to fade back to its normal colour. “So I wasn’t just tortured in that house. I was raped?”
He sat where he was on the damp ground, still relaxed, one arm resting casually on his raised knee. He looked straight back at me. “Yes,” he said. “You were.”
“It was your house. You tricked me into going there. It’s your responsibility.”
He nodded. “Yes. It is my responsibility,” he said.
“You kept coming into my head, telling me not to follow you. But you kept the horse’s hoof marks clear all through the forest. You made sure I’d come.”
“It was not my horse,” he pointed out mildly. “I did not steal Gerald away.”
I sat directly opposite him on the grass and glared hard into his black eyes. I was trying not to tremble. I said, “Before the storm that took me down the hill, there was a force pushing back against me. That was them. They didn’t want me there at all. But you did. You led me on. You wanted me there so you could swap me for Gerald.”
“Let us say that is accurate,” he said so softly that I could hardly hear him, though the silence all around us was broken only by blackbird song. “Let us say, for the sake of it, that you understand correctly.”
“And then,” I went on, “you knew I’d be tortured. You bandaged me up for them once. You thought I’d lost too much blood and you thought I might die. You kept me alive – for them to torture again. I heard them talk about it. You even warned me about the pain. You knew what they’d done to me and what they’d keep doing. So I expect you knew they’d rape me too. Which one was it? The foul grandfather? Arthur?”
I was shuddering. The thought disgusted me. Vespasian stared back, and I could see no emotion in his eyes at all. The birdsong faded into silence.
“No,” he said after a pause. “It was me.”
I stared. My astonishme
nt was complete. I hated him and distrusted him, but I had not expected that. Almost, I disbelieved him. “You?”
He nodded. Once Tilda would have given herself to him willingly. I believe at the time he knew it well. What he was saying made no sense. Now he said nothing. He continued to look unblinkingly into my eyes.
“Why?” I whispered in a sort of gasp.
“Yes, I am sure I owe you an explanation,” he said, and it was the first time that he seemed to sigh. “But I do not intend to give it to you. Now I wished merely to be sure you are not carrying my child. That would have been – how can I say – most inconvenient. You are not. At the time, I ensured that you would not conceive, but even I can sometimes make mistakes.”
I sat open mouthed and mumbled, “I don’t understand.”
“I know,” he said. “I am sorry.”
If it was an apology, it was the first ever. And nowhere near sufficient. “Did you,” I said, struggling with thoughts tumbling from their established patterns into incoherence, “stop one of the others? Who would have been - less gentle?” I was trying to make sense out of something that seemed hopelessly and embarrassingly senseless.
Vespasian didn’t smile. “But I was not gentle,” he said. “I’m afraid I was not gentle at all.”
He got up abruptly. I was still staring at him like an idiot with my mouth hanging open and my head spinning. He pointed to my sword which was still on the ground at his feet. I picked it up. For a moment I thought of trying to attack him with it but I knew his skill. He was too quick and would have struck me. Instead I buckled it to the belt around my hips. Then Vespasian turned away. He walked quickly back through the forest and I followed him at some distance. When we neared the house, he stopped briefly and looked back at me. “You’re free to marry Walter if you wish,” he said.
Tilda was still furious and I felt patronised. I was even angrier than she was. I took a deep breath and said, “Because you’ve had me. You’ve finished with me. And you accept I’m not – with child. Your child.”
He seemed momentarily surprised, but he only said, “In part.”
“I’ve no desire to marry Walter. Or anyone else,” she said.
“Very well,” he replied, walking on. “It is better that way.”
Chapter Twenty Five
Tilda was desperately miserable. In no part of the house could I escape or feel as I had once felt. Returning injured and in pain with Walter and Osbert, I had been precious cargo and immediately protected, cared for and central to the life that continued among us. Now it had changed. I could not bear to look at Vespasian. When he recommenced the lessons in archery and sword fighting I could not accept him touching me, looking at me or holding me, steadying my position or guiding my arm. I refused lessons. I avoided Gerald. I avoided Walter.
Stephen avoided me. He felt betrayed. I saw his discomfort. Walter’s spoken intention to marry me had broken up the intimate boyishness we shared, shattered the lack of self consciousness and the easy speech which even Richard’s death apparently hadn’t altered. Only big Hugh and Osbert seemed unaffected.
“If you don’t fancy marrying Walter,” Osbert said to me one quiet afternoon in the vegetable plot, “just tell him so. It won’t kill him you know. He just wants to be gallant. He doesn’t really understand love so what you say won’t hurt him that much.”
“Can you tell him for me?” Tilda asked. She was snipping off turnip greens for the pottage.
Osbert laughed. “What a child you are after all. No, I won’t tell him. You have to tell him yourself.”
“Well,” I said. “Actually, I have. But he just thinks I’m shy or I’m not ready. He doesn’t believe me.”
“Well,” said Osbert, with a fleeting blush, “girls always say no when they mean yes. But there’s one way to make it clear to him. If you really decide not to marry Walter, you can always marry me.”
I stared. I thought he would try and kiss me and when he put out his arm, I ducked beneath it, grabbed the vegetables I had collected, and dashed inside.
That night when I was curled small in the big soft bed and all the others were out in the main sleeping room snuffling into their straw, Tilda and I cried ourselves to sleep. What had been sunshine on sweet meadows had turned into grey rain clouds and the threat of thunder. Tilda felt she had become suddenly very ugly.
Instead I, equally suddenly, knew she had grown very beautiful. She was attracting interest that had previously quite passed her by and now the boys saw her as a woman instead of a friend. But what Vespasian thought of her, I had no idea.
Tilda’s dreams wandered lost, and the innocence of her imagination became distorted. She pictured what had been done to her. It repulsed and terrified her. She knew little or nothing in detail, for she had been tortured and reviled when she herself had not even been present in her own head. So I had no memory of the rape, and little of the beatings and burnings. But I knew I had been the victim of great cruelty indulged in by a group of inhumans with Vespasian among them.
Vespasian had long since repudiated Tilda’s timid adoration. The offer of a loving young girl in his arms had evidently not attracted him. He’d chosen brutality and force. Then she remembered being shackled to a stone table. Having no concept of rape, she imagined it. She imagined Vespasian staring at her nakedness and holding her down. Now she was torturing herself.
She decided to run away.
It was more than a week before I felt confident enough, and could give sufficient confidence to Tilda. It was another week before we could even decide where to go. In truth, there was nowhere to go but Tilda had been homeless before and she was less scared of that than of staying. She didn’t mourn the loss of her virginity, which seemed to mean comparatively little to her. But she mourned the loss of her adoration for Vespasian and the last passing of her respect for him.
“You’ve been avoiding my tutoring with the short sword,” he said to her. “You must learn whatever measures of self protection you can.”
“Protection? Against who? You?” she said, because they were alone.
“If you want to see it that way, yes,” he said. “I’m sure you’d like to hurt me if you could. So learn how.”
“Learn how to attack you?”
“Yes. How – and where.”
I stared back at him with whatever expression of contempt I could summon. “I don’t want you to teach me anything because I don’t want you to touch me.”
He smiled which I considered quite inappropriate. “I shall try hard not to do so,” he said. “However, the skills I can teach you are essential. To protect yourself against me – and anyone else.”
Reluctantly I followed him outside. Hugh and Gerald were practising a series of flying strokes that seemed more likely to behead the woodpigeons. It was the hottest day of autumn and I was still sweating from the cooking pot. The sun on the blades blinded me momentarily, reflecting daggers against my eyes. I lost coherence. In a sudden glitter of flashing images, I saw Molly rushing to the police station and the inspector’s grey frown, past the tiny bridge and the stream in a high white flurry, storms, floods, terror. A wide arched darkness opened before me and a buzzard flew through, its wings spread, obscuring the light. I thought Molly’s cottage was on fire and then I saw it was the setting sun’s reflections. Trees swept up in a marching menace towards a flaming sky. Something huge and terrible sprang from their shadows. I heard a door swinging shut, the grind of its hinges and the grate of its key. I heard horses galloping and felt the ground trembling beneath me, vibrating through my toes. A great urgency made me topple and faint.
I had fallen, all my bright confidence melting away like oozing butter. As my eyes closed I felt sharp metal slice though me. Then blackness.
But it was only seconds. I was swept up so quickly that I swung through the air like a little bird. I rested my head against Vespasian’s shoulder and could breathe again. “Piccina, what did you see on the other side?” he demanded, his voice unusually harsh and ti
ght against my ear.
As usual, it was not what I had expected him to say. “Put me down. I’m alright. I can walk now.”
“Don’t be a fool,” he said, and carried me indoors. It was cool in the great hall. He sat me in his high backed chair and knelt at my feet, his arms either side of me, holding to the chair arms and keeping me still. I stared back at him. “Now,” he repeated, “what did you see?”
I had feared him touching me. I’d hated the thought of his hands on me. After what I knew had happened, I’d only wanted to kill him. But now nothing else mattered and I just wanted him to hold me against him. “The sword,” I muttered. “It must have been a mistake. One of the boys?”
“Explain,” he demanded.
Wasn’t it obvious? “The blade went through me. I can’t tell where. Can’t you see? It must be bleeding.”
“There’s no sword and no wound,” said Vespasian softly. “You’ve not been hurt. Not this time, little one.”
“I felt it,” I insisted. “Steel and fire.”
“I believe you saw a vision, or a series of symbols,” he said. He reached forwards, gently tucking strands of hair back from my forehead. I felt the sweat like wet trickles on my brow. His voice was normal again, each word low and clear. “It’s important that I know exactly what you saw,” he said. “Now, pequena, describe everything that happened.”
So I told him. Already the memory was blurred and of course none of it made sense. I told him about the huge black bird and the floods, the fire, the trees, the horses and the sun. Then I told him about the great arch and the closing door, and it being another world, or perhaps the same world in a different time. I told him I had seen Molly, though I didn’t mention the name at first. “It was all just nonsense,” I said, looking away and breathing easily again. “Not visions, just silly dreams. I thought I was burning but I wasn’t. I thought I felt a sword cut me almost in two, slicing me into separate pieces, but that was silly too. Perhaps I came out of the shade too quickly. The sun in my eyes made me faint. It doesn’t matter, does it?”
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