by Sarah Hegger
She had left with the others. Alice had stood in the bailey and watched her go, waved her on her way. Sister had sat in the cart beside the Prioress and never turned as they cleared the gate. Surely, the Prioress would have sent word if she were missing?
“She is in the woods?”
“Aye, my lady. Upstream a ways, there is an old shepherd’s croft and she has taken shelter there.” Seamus’s eyes widened. “She said I had to come and find you. I was to tell you to bring food.”
* * * *
Alice rummaged through the quiet larder, cursing her stupidity.
Beside the banked kitchen hearth, Cook and Walter slept bathed in the ruddy glow of the coals. Soft snores rose from their bundled forms. She slipped into the kitchen with ease, waiting and half-wishing with every step for someone to hail her and stop her.
The wise course would be to tell William. It would only go badly for her if she did not and he discovered what she planned. She’d had her mind made up to tell him after dinner. Then William had arrived in their chamber in a sportive mood, and conversation had fled from her thoughts.
Cook left a few provisions out for nightly kitchen raids.
Alice snatched a couple of loaves of bread, a wheel of cheese, and some winter apples and stuffed them into her sack. Going to Sister like a thief had to be one of the stupidest things she had ever done. But she did it anyway. Because she felt some lingering loyalty for the woman who had raised her? Partly, but more because she wanted to make this go away without William having to involve himself.
Wonderful peace lay between them now. Her courses had still not come, and the growing conviction she carried their child made this time sweeter. Perhaps if she could see Sister, speak with her, she could make her see reason. If Sister went away, and without notice, perhaps Alice could avoid the nastiness that followed Sister.
From the stores beside the larder, she pulled an old blanket and pushed it into her sack. A couple of tapers followed, and a flint. Who knew what she would find when she reached Sister.
Through the kitchen door, she crept into the still inner bailey. Cold night air stole her breath. On the walls, the sentry’s torches flickered as they moved. Before William, the walls had stayed dark. Some part of her still hoped one of the guards might see her and call out. Then she could shut her nagging conscience up and return to her bed, knowing she had failed.
Then she would tell William.
Alice clung to the walls as she made her way around the bailey to the gate leading to the outer bailey. From the stables, horses whiskered and stamped. Low voices murmured to each other from the barracks. She inched past and into the outer bailey.
William would be so angry. She had made him angry so many times in their short marriage. His last accusation nestled in her breast with the sting of truth. Too often she had turned her head and let others take charge. Not this night. She would assume responsibility for Sister.
Alice stopped, her hand on the latch for the postern gate. Once she went through that gate, she set her course.
Out there, in the dark and the cold, Sister waited, and she had only recently recovered from her illness.
Nay, she would go to her. Persuade her to return to Tarnwych and in the morning they could send for the Prioress. Or better yet, take Sister to St. Stephen’s and make sure she stayed put this time.
Oiled hinges opened the postern gate onto the moor.
By night dark shadows made secret shapes on the moor, and she tripped over something and fell on the icy ground. Her sack slipped from her hand and rolled away. Alice scrabbled after it and stayed crouched low to the ground.
William had trained the sentries well, but the moon hid behind heavy-laden snow clouds.
As she moved through the dark, her eyes grew surer and she quickened her pace. The dark shape to her left must be the rocks she could see from her casement.
The furs William had given her kept the worst chill off her body, but yesterday’s small snowfall seeped through her boots and chilled her feet. Sister risked freezing to death if she sheltered close to the tarn. Wind came off the water there with a dagger-sharp cut of ice.
Surely, the river lay close now. Distances confused her in the dark, and Alice took a moment to find her place. There, thick and hulking, rose the towers of Tarnwych. She went the right way.
Water whispered to her long before the thin glitter of river in the moonlight peeped between the trees. Turning left, she followed its course upstream. As she moved closer to the water, the chill deepened, and Alice huddled into her furs. Sister had left with nothing more than her wool cloak. Alice should have thought to bring another.
“There you are.” A scream caught in Alice’s throat as a thin form appeared out of the dark.
“Sister?”
“Aye.” Sister gripped her arm and tugged. “Come. I have been waiting outside for you.”
“I came as soon as I could.” Fool she for coming at all.
“I prayed for you.” Sister ducked around the ghostly tree trunks. “I prayed you would see the truth and come to me. God has answered my prayers.”
Alice felt sure God had very little to do with this. “I came to take you back to the keep with me.”
“Whist, Alice.” Sister’s fingers dug into her wrist. Her breath made clouds in the air about her head. “Do not be stupid and come along. Anyone could be out here. They are looking for me, you know? I can feel them. They bring their dogs with them.”
“St. Stephen’s keeps hunting hounds?”
“I did not see them, but I know they are there.”
Limned by the sparse moonlight, the hut came into view between the trees.
With a loud creak, the door opened and Sister pulled her inside. “Did you bring tapers?”
“Aye.”
“Light them.”
Alice’s hands shook with cold, and it took several strikes to raise a spark. In the taper’s dim light, the hovel looked long since deserted. Leaves and branches littered the floor from where one part of the roof had collapsed. The walls did little to ward off the cold.
“You should light a fire.” Alice’s teeth chattered, and she rubbed her hands together for warmth.
“I cannot light a fire.” Sister turned to her. “They will see it. They hunt me.”
Her first good look at Sister shocked Alice speechless. Hair matted and snarled, writhed about her head like a nest of vipers. Her face appeared gaunter beneath the layers of grime. She still wore her habit, but it was torn in places and soiled. Sister’s eyes shocked Alice the most. Alice could not drag her stare away. If not completely mad, Sister teetered close to the edge of the abyss. Her gaze darted about, burning fever-bright.
“I brought food.” Alice held up her sack.
Sister scuttled forward and snatched it from her. Like an animal, she squatted on the floor and opened the sack.
“Sister, you must come back with me. You cannot live like this.”
“Nay.” Sister scrabbled through the sack. “If I go back with you they will send me to that place.”
“St. Stephen’s.” Alice crouched beside her.
Sister tore into the bread with her teeth. “It is filled with whores and adulterers.”
“It is an Abbey, Sister, surely not.”
“You know nothing.” Sister huddled over her bread. “You know nothing about those places and the sin behind their walls. But I know.” She took more mouthfuls of bread. “I know.” Crumbs sprayed from her mouth, and Alice inched away from her. “Because I know their secrets they have to kill me.”
There did not seem any point in carrying the conversation further down that road. “I promise William will not send you back to St. Stephen’s.” But clearly Sister needed to go somewhere. The creature in front of her had drifted beyond reason. It hurt to see her thus.
“William.” Sister cackled and grabbed the wheel of cheese. Digging her dirt-encrusted fingers through the rind, she pulled ou
t a handful. “William the fornicator. He took my Alice.” She looked up, her gaze sharp. “He turned my Alice against me with his lewd ways, and his stiff man’s rod.”
Alice had never heard Sister refer to…that. She scuttled further away from Sister, wanting to put distance between herself and the addled stranger spitting cheese from her venom-thinned lips.
“He sticks it in her, again and again and again. Spills his seed and sin deep inside her until she is rotten from it. Rotten and stinking of him and the devil.”
Alice needed to leave here. She rose. Coming here tonight had been a worse mistake than she had first thought. Reason would not prevail here. The creature cackling through her meal in the hut was not Sister. Not the Sister she had known, anyway.
Had the nuns coming to take her back driven her mad, or had it lain inside her, coiled and waiting to appear? Flashes of incidents tumbled through Alice’s mind. Rages that would shake Tarnwych for days. Not often, but vicious enough to send everyone running. Days spent on her knees in the chapel as Sister ranted Bible verses at her and implored her to repent.
Dear God. Sister had not grown mad. She had always been mad.
Sister stood and stalked Alice. “What are you doing?”
“I must return to the keep. They will note my absence.”
“You lie.” Sister closed on her.
Alice sprang back. The hut rattled as her back jammed into the wall. “Nay, Sister. I must return but I will be back.” With William and an army if that was what she needed.
“You want them to kill me.”
“Nay, Sister. I would never want that.”
Kill.
The hut shimmered and dipped about Alice and she lost her bearings. Beneath her nails, the wood wall provided her only anchor.
Kill him. Sister screamed in her mind. Clear as if it happened right now. Kill the abomination before he soils my Alice.
Alice’s head spun, she could not draw a decent breath.
The boy. The one like Mathew, but not Mathew. A different boy. A boy who had lived at Yarborough. Play, Alice, play. Then gone.
Vanished into a deep hole in her memory, but now his face rose clear as day and stared at her through his heavy-lidded eyes. Kill him!
So much blood. Warm and sticky, it clung to her hair and her face. Blood, red and thick, as it pooled around the boy’s head. His eyes, open and staring, and even then she had known he was dead. Like the rabbits that lay on the kitchen table before Cook skinned them.
Sour bile stung Alice’s mouth.
Sister watched her, head cocked as if she saw what Alice saw. “Come back soon, and we will make a plan to escape.”
“Aye, Sister.” Alice’s hand shook on the latch. Flinging open the door, she fell into the night.
Dear God, what had she remembered?
Mind whirling, Alice stumbled to the keep. Rocks and low vegetation caught her feet and tangled them. The door had opened in her mind and she could not shut it, did not want to shut it as the images blasted her.
The boy had lived with Sister at Yarborough. Then one day he had disappeared and left a gaping hole in her memory. Strange, quiet, and existing on the outskirts of keep life, he had intrigued her and frightened her. Sister told her never to go near him.
Evil.
Abomination.
Until that day she had, and they had played for hours until it went tragically wrong. She could not have been more than three when it happened. He had held her above the water in a game her childish mind could not grasp. Her screams had brought the castle folk running, and then…Sister shrieking for the boy to die, and her father’s sword, raised in one deadly flash.
“My lady?” A gate guard stepped into her path. “Are you ill, my lady?”
She shook her head. But she was ill, sick to her stomach.
The quiet bailey mocked the storm within her. Her frozen fingers fumbled on the door latch. Heavy wood doors resisted her attempt to push them open and Alice shoved her full weight into them. Warm air rushed from the hall hearths, and her extremities prickled and sparked as they thawed.
“Alice?” Beatrice wove into view. Face creased in a frown, she looked at Alice and then beyond her to the still-open door. “Have you been out?”
“Aye.” Rusty as if forced from the depths of her, Alice managed a reply.
“But where can you have been?”
William. Alice needed to get to William. In his arms she might find peace. “Moors.”
“Why would you go to the moors? In the middle of the night?”
She stumbled past Beatrice to the stairs. “I needed air.”
“But…”
Alice took the stairs at a run. Her legs shook but William, and respite, lay in her bed, and she wished she could fly to him. She had to tell him all of it. Sister was quite mad, and she had been for all the years Alice had grown up with her. Sister had set her thoughts, molded Alice’s opinions, and made her believe the fevered lies of a lunatic. All these years, lies and mistruths cloaked one within the other—until William came and brought light into the shadows.
She slid into their chamber and removed her old bliaut.
William had warmed the bed. He murmured and wrapped his arms around her.
Tears filled her eyes and snaked onto the pillow. Safe.
* * * *
Alice woke with her belly heaving. She barely made it to the basin before her stomach repelled its entire contents.
“Alice?” William’s groggy voice filled with concern.
Alice waved her hand to reassure him, and lost the battle again.
“Are you ill?”
Nay, she always vomited for the pleasure of it. Dear God, she had no words, not a one for how wretched she felt. Her stomach clenched, and there she went again.
“Sweeting.” William rushed to her side as another spasm wrenched through her. “Shall I fetch Ivy?”
Alice shook her head. She did not want him near her in her soiled state. She must smell appalling.
William smoothed her hair back and held it in a bunch at her nape. “God’s teeth.” His voice sounded weak. “I’ve seen men after days in a war camp do better than this.”
“William?”
“Aye?”
“Please be quiet.”
“Aye, sweeting.” Long, soothing strokes ran from her nape to her waist. “Cedric!”
His bellow made her jump, which reminded her stomach it had not settled. At this rate she would lose all her innards. Had yesterday’s meat been spoiled?
William appeared a touch green.
The door crashed open and Cedric rushed in. “Aye, my lord.”
“Get Mistress Ivy. Tell her my lady is ill.”
“Lady Alice is ill?”
He frowned at her, concern in his eyes.
Then Alice faced the noxious mess in the basin again. Death take her now. Her legs sagged, and William caught her about the waist.
“There now.” He leant her against his chest and dipped a washcloth in the water ewer. “Ivy will find what ails you.”
She pressed her face into the heavenly cool of the cloth. “You should not see me thus.”
“Really?” William stroked the cloth over her forehead and cheek. “And when should I see you? When you are gowned and perfumed and ready to go a-Maying?”
How anyone could make her laugh at this time, she knew not, but she did.
“I am sure there will be many days when you will see me squalling like a wounded bull over a stubbed toe.”
Alice rested her forehead against his strong chest. “I feel horrible.”
“Never mind, sweeting.” He bent and picked her up.
Alice’s stomach mounted a protest and she screeched, “William.”
He dropped her smartly to her feet and stepped back.
When she was done, he helped her back to the bed with an arm about her waist.
Ivy followed her discreet knock into the
chamber. “Cedric said Alice was ill.”
“Aye.” William pushed a hand through his hair. “She has been going at it like a camp follower.”
She lay down. Her stomach felt more settled. “I am sure I am fine.”
“See to her.” William’s hair stood about his head.
“I will.” Ivy pushed him toward the door. “Now, out you go. Have a bath brought up. I am sure she will feel a lot better after she smells better.”
Ivy asked a few questions and listened to Alice’s responses with her quiet, cool air. “You have not told William yet, have you?”
For a nasty moment she thought Ivy referred to Sister. She must tell William as soon as her stomach settled. Sister could not remain in the woods, a danger to herself and anybody who stumbled upon her. Then it hit her what Ivy meant. “About the…” Alice waved over her belly.
“Aye, about that.”
And her morning’s illness nearly made her laugh. “Is the sickness because of the baby?”
“I would wager so.” Ivy sat on the edge of the bed, hands folded in her lap. “You have no fever or any other ailments to go with it. If I am right, you should feel much better shortly.”
“Then this is normal for a woman carrying?” You could not live in a keep and not see what happened to other women in her condition.
Ivy shrugged. “Nurse would know better, but I believe most women experience some of this.”
Alice touched her belly beneath the covers. If it meant she carried William’s child, she would gladly bear the upset stomach. Well, perhaps not gladly, but she would bear it.
“Could you take any food? I have heard it helps.”
The mere thought rippled through her on an uneasy shudder. “Nay.”
“Perhaps later then. I will steep some root ginger for you to drink, and perhaps an apple.”
“Ivy?” Alice clenched her teeth.
“Aye.”
“Could you stop speaking of things I must swallow?”
Ivy rose and smoothed the covers about Alice. “You need to tell him, Alice. I have known William for a little while, but I know he does not like secrets.”
Alice nodded. Fatigue swept over her. “I will tell him after I have rested.”