“And what of you? What of your abbot?”
“My brother’s conduct does not reflect well on our order. We are all too aware of his … tendencies. We are also aware of the unfortunate reputation we have garnered in recent years thanks to a few misguided men like Justus. That is why I was asked to accompany him in the first place. I think I can speak for the abbot in saying that silence on this matter suits us as much as it does everyone else. Nor will the archbishop be disappointed to hear nothing has come of this little escapade. His assistance was reluctant at best.”
“And Despenser?”
“I fear dark times are coming, Thomas. Rebellion is in the wind again, and the war with France goes poorly. The king and Despenser will have little time to be concerned with the comings and goings in a little provincial village.”
Thomas nodded and grasped Dominic’s arm, feeling the pressure returned. “Then I think we have an understanding.” He spoke a little louder for the benefit of their audience. “Please thank Friar Justus for his visit and wish him a comfortable journey back to London.”
The Dominican huffed loudly and shifted uncomfortably on his mule, his rear end doubtless still tender from the vigorous scrubbing it had needed—a scrubbing Thomas had made sure was performed by several women from the village who had laughed giddily throughout the entire process.
Constable John lumbered up, casting a sullen gaze at the friars as they headed down to the village main street.
“Well it’s good riddance to them two I say.”
“Friar Dominic is not like his master.”
“I guess there’s hope then.” John spat to the side to ward off evil. “Is he still in there?”
“Yes, he won’t be coming out soon, John. Eustace will come for him when he has spent his strength and has no choice but to sleep.”
John spat again. “I always knew there was something fishy about him. I said as much to Dotty more than once. It don’t surprise me none that he’s the one that did it. I had it in my mind all along it might be him.”
“Not demons? Not witches then?”
“Like I said, I keep an open mind.”
“Did you find anything, John?”
Thomas had dispatched the constable with a few other men to search for signs of Alice’s passing in the woods.
“Maybe,” he answered. “We found some track at the edge of the forest leading to the Melton road. Way I figure it, she’ll be making her way to Hull and catching a ship from there. You want that we should follow?”
Thomas shook his head, and the constable nodded in both agreement and relief, and then flinched as a loud wail echoed from the church.
“You don’t suppose she was, well, that she was really, you know …” John left his fear unspoken lest it bring down bad fortune upon them.
“I don’t know for sure, John.”
Ah, but Thomas did know. He wondered whether he had always known from the first time they met. He thought that maybe he had.
“But I do know that she was not the woman our madman thought her to be. I suspect he came to extort her wealth. Perhaps on seeing her, he wanted more. He imagined that he was the monster, not she.”
John puffed out his cheeks. “And to think we sat down at her table.” His shook his head in disbelief. “Will you be on your way now?”
“I have to visit the manor first.”
“Oh, aye.” The constable raised his eyebrows and smirked. “Left something there did you?”
Thomas laughed, touched the bulge at the breast of his tunic, and slapped John on one of his massive arms. “I have some letters to deliver, and then I shall head back to Lincoln.”
“Well, I suppose this is it then?” John in his turn clapped Thomas on the shoulder. “I shall speak with the reeve, and we’ll work something out for your place, make sure it’s ready for you when you return. You’ll be welcome here, by more than just the manor.”
Thomas smiled his gratitude. The big oaf had grown on him, and he proceeded to crush Thomas in a monstrous embrace that left him almost as breathless as Cecily’s kiss.
* * *
A short while later Thomas stood in Isabella’s parlor. They were alone, and she had listened as he recounted the events of the night.
“I believe these are yours, my lady. You wrote them long ago, when you were very young.”
He held the bundle of letters out to her.
She reached out to take them but hesitated, looking up at him suspiciously. “You give them to me freely?”
“They are not mine to keep. They belong to the one who wrote them in the first place.”
Isabella gasped out the breath she had been holding and snatched them from his hand. She held them quickly to the candle’s flame before he could change his mind and, once they were well alight, tossed them into the brazier and stood silently watching them burn.
Hers was a sad tale. She had written the letters to another man not long before she had married De Bray. To an uncle, Thomas believed. She had pleaded for him to fetch her away, her and the child she feared that she carried for him, each letter scrawled in its childlike hand more desperate than the last. But he never came. The letters had gone unanswered. They had been entrusted to the steward, Roger Lacy. Thomas wondered whether the old man had ever thought to deliver them or whether he had somehow learned their content at the time and simply squirreled them away for future use. Her family must have married Isabella hurriedly, before she showed. The story, and Isabella’s … oddities explained how a gruff old soldier like De Bray was able to secure such a seemingly advantageous match to the beautiful young daughter of a powerful family. A match that, unbeknownst to him, had also brought with it a bastard child who by rights would stand to inherit nothing but shame.
“You will not mention this?” she asked over her shoulder, still watching the smoldering ash. “Even to Cecily … especially to Cecily?”
“I will not.”
She sighed with relief, and then turned to him, looked down and swallowed thickly. “And, … and in return?”
“And in return I only ask that you live a happy life. The life you were meant to live. And that you raise your son to be a good man who will one day be a good lord to the people here.”
“You ask nothing of me? Even though I treated you ill?”
Thomas shook his head.
“Do you judge me?”
“Not I.”
She averted her eyes. “He made me do things, Thomas.” It was the first time he remembered her using his name. “Terrible things.”
“I think I know the kind of man he was. He shall never trouble you again.”
At that moment the door banged open, and Isabella’s son came running in and hurled himself at his mother, burying his face in her skirts. She put her arm around him and looked up at Thomas with tear-filled eyes.
“And, my lady,” he added as an afterthought, “might I suggest you rid yourself of that mirror?”
Isabella knotted her brows together, looking from him to the mirror and then back again, giving him a bewildered look that suggested she suspected him to be half mad.
* * *
Cecily was waiting for him at the entrance to the Great Hall. Thomas realized that by keeping Isabella’s secret, he might be depriving her of a valuable inheritance, but he had chosen what he thought to be the lesser evil, and Cecily had made clear that she had no wish to be a wealthy heiress, vulnerable to unscrupulous men who would only seek to use her for her birthright. In all, he thought she would approve of his decision. Either way, the decision was made.
“What will you do now, Thomas?” she asked.
“I must report to Bishop Henry, though I doubt he will believe what I tell him.”
Thomas would have to be fairly circumspect with the truth. The tale Dominic suggested would serve best.
“And after. Will you return?”
“I think I must, my lady.” He smiled at her. “Did you forget that I have land here? A hundred acres or so, I believe.�
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She laughed. “So you do, and I am glad. It would please me for you to return soon.”
She looked down shyly and touched him lightly on his arm. He covered her hand with his own.
“It would please me too, Cecily.”
No further words were necessary.
De Bray limped out to join them and put an arm around his daughter’s shoulder. He looked better. There was a healthy flush of color in his cheeks, and he looked younger, less fragile, like he was regaining his strength.
Thomas said his farewells, and they both stood at the top of the steps, watching him ride away.
“He will come back, won’t he?” Cecily asked.
“Do you like him so much, then?”
She ignored the question, knowing her father already knew the answer. “He will come back. I know he will. He has a reason to do so. And he is a knight’s son, is he not?”
De Bray squeezed her shoulder, and she snuggled against him. “Yes, he is. And I have already written to Henry. He will make sure your young man is back here soon enough. Now, come inside. You and I have some things to discuss.”
CHAPTER 27
Thomas was harnessing his horse when he heard her running through the mud, the little ankle boots sucking and squelching against the wet ground. She stopped a few paces away, breathing heavily, one hand clapped to her linen cap, a small sack dangling from the other.
Thomas barely looked up from his task. “You have come a long way, Hunydd.” The walk from the manor to his little cottage was well over a mile, and it looked as though she had covered the distance in some haste. “Won’t Lady Cecily miss you?”
She ignored his question.
“She said you are leaving?”
“I am. I must make my report to the Bishop of Lincoln.”
Hunydd chewed her lip in thought. “I have never seen Lincoln. They say the cathedral sits high on top of the hill so that it can be seen for miles all around. They say it is the finest church in all of England.”
“It is one of the finest, to be sure,” he allowed.
“I should like very much to see Lincoln, Thomas. I should like to see the imp you told me about. The one the angel trapped up on the stone pillar after he had spanked the other one. I should like you to tell me the story again.”
Thomas nodded to the sack she held dangling from her hand. “What’s that you have there?”
“Only what I need to bring with me.”
He tightened the cinches on his horse’s saddle. “You would be a runaway, Hunydd.”
The lord of a manor had a year to hunt down any villein of his that left the estate, in which time he could drag them back to be branded and to face justice.
“I don’t care. And in any case, they won’t call me a runaway. You see, I am—” She paused awkwardly, her face flushing even more. “I am—”
“De Bray’s bastard child?”
“Yes,” she replied emphatically. “It does not make me dirty, does it, to be a bastard? My mother said it was not my sin. That it was my father’s sin. You don’t think less of me now, do you?”
“Why would I?”
He nodded again to the sack she now clutched to her chest. “You travel light.”
“I don’t need much. It’s not fair that they took me from my mother, Thomas, that they brought me here and made me their servant. But if I must serve them, then I would see some of the world first. I should like to see it with you. To travel as you have done, even if only for a little while. And … and I would not be any bother to you. I can take care of myself. I can take care of you as well. You would not regret it if you were to take me with you.”
Thomas turned to face her. “You should know I was married once and that I loved my wife”
Hunydd looked at him, completely unmoved, as if he had said nothing. She had sensed it on him of course. The sadness of a love cut short, of a great loss. But there was more. She had noticed the pendant he wore the first time she saw him. He probably didn’t even know it was a charm. But she knew, and she knew it meant he had once been claimed by another—one like her, who must have felt the same attraction to him that she did.
“You should also know that whatever is left of my heart to give is now pledged to another, should she wish it. If I were to take you with me, it would only be to see you settled in a respectable home, and I would tell your father of your whereabouts. He may insist that I bring you back, and I would have little choice but to do so. Howsoever you believe he has wronged you, he is still your father, and he has that right. I can promise you no more than this, Hunydd.”
She bit her lip and nodded her understanding.
Without another word, he took her little sack and she watched as he secured it to the sumpter pony.
“I’ll make you a pillion seat so you can ride behind me,” he said over his shoulder.
Hunydd grinned. The Dominican had been such a fool. What had he been thinking? A sacrifice in a church—that was not how magic was woven. Not the kind of powerful magic that had brought Thomas to her. No, that required other kinds of sacrifices, more personal sacrifices that had nothing to do with Christians, or with their churches, or their ceremonies.
“Will we be able to gallop again, please?” she asked excitedly. “I liked that.”
Thomas laughed. It was a wonderful sound to Hunydd’s ears, and she could not keep the foolish grin off her face as he lifted her to the pillion seat and climbed up in front of her. She gripped him around the waist and felt a thrill in her stomach. She had never been to a city like Lincoln. There must be wonderful things to see, and she would be with Thomas. Hunydd squeezed hard, scarce believing her good fortune. She was almost bursting with happiness.
A part of her even regretted having ever poisoned her father, feeding him dose after dose of the poison, small measures that would condemn him to a slow, debilitating death. She had hated him, she supposed. He had ravished her mother, and even if he had not, even if her mother had lied and had given herself to him willingly, he had deserted them both, which to Hunydd’s mind was just as bad, maybe even worse. And then he had dragged her from her home to serve her own sister. A sister who lived in luxury while he would not even acknowledge Hunydd to the world, just as much his own flesh and blood as Cecily.
But none of that mattered to her anymore. He had been punished enough, and she would allow him to recover and live out the rest of his life in loneliness with his arrogant daughter. Hunydd had what she wanted.
The horse was moving under them in a steady rolling gait, and Hunydd clung on to Thomas tighter, her stomach trembling.
She did not at all regret killing the vicar. He was a hypocrite, preaching righteousness, punishing others for their sins while his own eyes wandered. Hunydd had not liked the way he touched her, the way his soft hands lingered when she had gone to him for confession. Nor the things he had suggested she ought to do for penance. She had tipped a concoction of her own making into his wine one evening. A heady brew sure to set the old man’s pulse racing and speed him on his journey to the next life. Perhaps it had been unnecessary, but at the time she had thought it for the best.
Thomas felt warm and strong, and she felt safe with him. She pressed her cheek against his back. True he had promised her nothing. For the moment his head was still too full of Cecily, but that would soon change. There were many ways to bind a man. Ways her mother had taught her. Old ways. Ways that her people had used before the Church. Ways of which perhaps even Alice did not know and of which she would certainly not approve. The spell Hunydd had wrought with the little wax poppet, now hidden safely away among the clothes in her sack, was but one of them, and she could tell it was working. Otherwise he would not have agreed to take her with him. Not without first speaking to her father, or to her sister.
She snuggled closer against him. He belonged to her now.
“Will you show me the imp?”
Thomas nodded.
It was not an imp. She already knew that. It was the green m
an. Christians were so silly sometimes. They thought the old beliefs were dead, when instead they were just carried forward in their own symbols, like the Celtic cross that hung around Thomas’s neck. Like their Holy Days that just happened to fall on the same days as the ancient festivals. And like the green man, who sat high on the pillar of their cathedral, watching over them in their house of worship, laughing at them while they prayed to their God. Hunydd would be sure to say a prayer in the cathedral as well. But she would pray to her own Gods: to Beltane, to Diana, to Hecate, to Eostre, and to the spirits of her ancestors.
“Shall we gallop soon?”
Thomas laughed and Hunydd felt her stomach tremble again. She was finally doing it. She was leaving to start her own life. For the first time, she was sure that she was truly happy. And she would make Thomas happy as well. She just knew it.
CHAPTER 28
This businesse about these witches troubled all the state of Ireland the more, for that the ladie was supported by certeine of the nobilitie, and lastlie conveied over into England, since which time it could never be understood what became of hir.
—The Lady Alice Kettle, Holinshed’s Chronicle of Ireland (sub anno 1323)
Alice Kyteler stood on the prow of the ship swathed in a dark hooded cloak, watching the Calais harbor slide ever closer. It was a French port, and not ideal, but it was the only destination she could reach in such haste.
A man stepped up beside her. He was tall and powerfully built. Shrewd, black eyes looked out from a handsome face, burnished a deep bronze by the sun of some distant Southern clime. Alice did not turn to him. Instead, she drew the cloak closer against the sea breeze that whipped and flapped the hem around her legs.
“Now you choose to turn up,” she said.
The man rested his hands on the rail and looked out over the harbor. “You made quite a mess back there, Alice.” His deep voice was heavily accented, as exotic as his complexion. “I thought you were going to be discrete from now on?”
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