The Widow's Kiss

by Jane Feather

  25

  Will Malfrey shivered in the predawn chill, pulling his head into the hood of his cloak like a snail withdrawing into its shell. He cursed Jack Stedman for landing him with this vigil. Jack would be warm in his bed, gloating that he’d found the perfect penalty for Will's supposed crime. It hadn’t been a crime at all. Will had found someone else to stand in for him that night. He had just neglected to mention the change to Stedman.

  He stamped his feet and thrust his gloved hands deeper into the pockets of his cloak. His breath was white in the gray darkness. Of course he should have known better. Jack Stedman's master, Hugh of Beaucaire, was a hard man to cross. A military man with exceedingly high expectations when it came to the loyalty and sense of duty of those under his command. Jack as his lieutenant upheld the standards with what Will considered to be uncalled-for enthusiasm.

  The creaking of the wicket gate aroused him from his disgruntled reverie. He stepped backward into the angle of the wall where he would not be seen. The wicket opened and a large, burly man stepped out into the lane.

  He turned to say something to the porter at the gate, clapping his arms across his chest.

  Will peered at him. The man turned his head and the watcher could see a clipped beard on a fleshy face. He was shrouded in a cloak of a rather startling yellow. Will had been told to be on the lookout for a colorful man. A fleshy man with a considerable belly, and a clipped beard.

  The man set off briskly towards the river and Will Malfrey followed at a safe distance. At the river, the man stepped into a waiting barge where he stood in the light of the swinging cresset in the stern, his expression that of a very unhappy man.

  Almost as unhappy as Will himself had been a few minutes earlier, Will thought with an inner chuckle as he put two fingers to his lips and sent a piercing whistle towards the group of skiffs waiting for passengers a little farther along the embankment. He sprang lightly into the boat that beat the competition and told the two oarsmen to follow the barge. With action came enthusiasm. His vigil had produced results and results were always rewarded in Lord Hugh's service, just as faults were invariably penalized.

  Robin was worse the next morning. Hugh stood at his bedside beside the leech, hiding his terror at the sight of his barely conscious son. The boy's breathing was thin and fast, the cough wracked him almost constantly, his eyes were half closed and his skin burned hot and dry.

  It was a gloomy day and the candles and lamp had been lit to throw more light for the leech's grim work. Robin barely protested as the vile creatures were pressed to his arms and into his groin.

  “ ’Tis a severe fever, my lord,” the leech muttered, removing new bloodsuckers from the bottle, ready to replace the ones already sucking when they’d had their fill.

  He was a short, fat little man with a long beard and malodorous breath. His clothes had seen better days and his boots were cracked. Medicine was not a lucrative profession unless a man had the luck to serve the household of a great nobleman.

  “I can see it's severe,” Hugh snapped, revolted by the fat slugs on his son's body. “What else can you give him?”

  “Well, I’ve a potion here that might help,” the leech muttered uncertainly, diving into his sack. “But if ’tis the sweating sickness … or God forbid, the plague …”

  “Dear God, he's not sweating!” Hugh declared savagely. “ ’Twould be better if he were! And there's no plague hereabouts. There can’t be. The boy's barely left the house for the last week.”

  “And everyone's well in the house?” The leech scratched his head and frowned.

  “As far as I know.”

  “What are you giving him?” Guinevere's quiet voice spoke from the door. She looked as worried as Hugh as she stepped to the bed and asked the leech, “Hyssop and echinacea might help, don’t you think?”

  He shrugged. “I doubt it, madam. When a fever's as bad as this there's nothing to be done but bleed the patient and pray.” He replaced the fattened leeches with new ones.

  “You shouldn’t be in here,” Hugh said to Guinevere. “You don’t wish to catch this yourself. You’ll spread it to the girls.”

  “As will you,” she pointed out. “I would like to nurse him. Tilly too. She's a skilled nurse. Skilled with simples.”

  Hugh shook his head. “No, I don’t want anyone to do anything for him but myself.”

  “But why?” she asked. “Why would you refuse to let me do what I can?”

  Hugh shook his head again but didn’t answer her. He bent over Robin, lifting his eyelids. The whites of the boy's eyes were streaked with yellow.

  Guinevere watched him for a moment, then she turned and glided from the chamber.

  The girls were gathered at the door. “What's the matter with Robin, Mama?” Pen asked, grabbing her mother's hand.

  “Is it still the wine?” asked Pippa from her other side.

  “No, love. Robin has a fever. The leech is bleeding him now.”

  “Can we see him?” Pen asked.

  “No, in case you catch whatever he has.”

  “We could sniff the pomanders,” suggested Pippa. “They keep away fevers, don’t they?”

  “Not always. Go to your lessons now. Maybe later today, when Robin's feeling better, you can visit him.”

  The girls trailed off to their books and Guinevere made her way downstairs. She understood Hugh's agonized fear for his child. But she didn’t understand why he wouldn’t let her nurse the boy.

  Hugh escorted the leech from the house then came to the fire in the hall. Guinevere set aside her embroidery frame and leaned her head against the high back of the settle to look up at him as he stood with one foot on the fender, his frowning eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance.

  “I am not a great believer in bleeding,” she said quietly. “In most cases it merely weakens the patient further.”

  “You are no physician,” he returned. “A lawyer, an able administrator, I grant you, but you lay no claims to being a physician too. Or am I mistaken?”

  Guinevere tried to ignore the barbed tone. She shook her head. “No, I make no such claim. But as a wife and a mother, I’ve had some considerable experience of nursing.”

  “Experience, certainly, but how much success?” He turned his gaze upon her, a brilliant piercing stare. “How many of your husbands did you nurse back to health, Guinevere?”

  She closed her eyes briefly. “I understand your concern for Robin, Hugh, but it doesn’t give you the right to attack me in such fashion.”

  He shrugged. “I merely asked a question. Not an unreasonable one. I presume you had a hand in nursing those of your husbands who survived, however briefly, the accidents and ailments that eventually killed them.”

  Would this suspicion lie forever between them? She turned up her palms in a small gesture of resignation and rose to her feet. “I have matters to discuss with Master Crowder.”

  Hugh watched her leave the hall with her fluid grace, her head erect, her back so straight. He hadn’t intended to say what he’d said but the words had spoken themselves. Fear and suspicion were maggots in his head now, eating away at reason. With a muttered exclamation, he strode back to the stairs.

  As he turned into the corridor to Robin's chamber, he came face-to-face with the man called Tyler. “What business d’you have up here?” he demanded irritably of the servant. Kitchen staff didn’t in general frequent the family's private quarters.

  “Master Crowder, m’lord. ’E sent me to refill any oil lamps that needed it,” the man said, his eyes lowered, his entire posture that of a submissive servant. He held up a leather flagon of lamp oil in evidence. “I was jest checkin’ in the bedchambers, sir.”

  Hugh frowned. “I understood Master Milton was to have charge of all matters outside the kitchen.”

  “Master Crowder's steward of the stores, sir,” the man responded, still keeping his eyes lowered. “ ’E wanted to know ’ow much oil ’ad been burned last even.”

  “Oh.”
Hugh could find no fault with this explanation although he didn’t like the idea of strange servants roaming the upper floor of his house. He made a mental note to bring the subject up with Crowder himself and dismissed the man with a curt nod before hurrying into Robin's chamber.

  The oil lamp, presumably refilled, was turned low and in its soft light the boy lay still, barely breathing it seemed to Hugh. Guinevere had been right. The attentions of the leech seemed to have had no effect at all, apart from weakening him even further.

  Hugh slammed the fist of one hand into the palm of the other, struggling with his terror. He had the absolute sense that his son was dying before his eyes. Robin coughed weakly, his eyelids fluttered, and for a second he stared up at Hugh without awareness. His lips were dry and cracked, his skin lifeless.

  The conviction and the compulsion came out of nowhere. He had to get the boy out of this house. There was a malevolence, an evil in the very air. Hugh was not a man given to such fancies. He had no time for curses, for the evil eye, for talk of witchcraft. But he acted now under the spur of something that had no root in rational thought. Someone, something, was killing his son and he had to get him as far from this house as he could.

  He bent over Robin, wrapping him securely in the blankets and covers, then he picked him up. The boy was terrifyingly light, as if he’d lost all substance. Hugh almost ran with him out of the chamber and down the stairs.

  Guinevere had returned to her place on the settle. She jumped up as Hugh rushed to the front door. “Hugh, what are you doing? Where are you taking Robin?” She stepped towards him, her hand outstretched.

  “I’m taking him away,” he said, turning at the door, the boy held tight in his arms. “This is not a healthy place for him to be.”

  Guinevere paled as she met his gaze. There was a wild-ness to his eyes that she had never seen before. And there was something else … something unbelievable. There was accusation. Her hand dropped to her side. “What do you mean?”

  He couldn’t say the words, couldn’t speak his suspicions. He had no grounds, only this deep certainty that some evil was at work on his son. And Guinevere had a motive for that evil. “I’m not sure what I mean,” he said and left the house.

  Guinevere stood still in the hall, her hand at her throat. It wasn’t possible that he held her to blame for Robin's illness. It wasn’t possible. He might still harbor doubts about her innocence in Stephen's death, but never, not in the wildest flights of nightmare, could he imagine she would harm Robin. She was a mother. He could not believe such a thing of her.

  And yet she knew that when he’d looked at her with such wild eyes that that was what he believed.

  She felt sick and faint. She passed a hand over her brow, feeling it clammy. How could she live with a man who could for one instant believe her capable of such a monstrous thing? How could she share his bed, bear his child?

  Slowly she passed a hand over her stomacher. Slowly she sat down again, resting her head once more on the high back of the settle. She had always known well before the signs were clear when she had conceived. The knowledge that she now carried Hugh's child had been on the periphery of her awareness for several days. She hadn’t examined the knowledge, had let it lie until she could be absolutely certain. Certain enough, at least, to make the news public. It would be another week before she could do that. Until then the secret that had given her so much joy belonged only to her.

  Perhaps Hugh had not thought that monstrous thing. She could have mistaken his meaning. He was terrified for Robin, desperate. He hadn’t known what he was saying, what he might have been implying. Of course that was it. When Robin was out of danger they would talk again.

  Unconsciously she pressed her fingers to her mouth. Robin must get better. It was unthinkable that he wouldn’t. But where was Hugh taking the boy? It was madness to rush out into the cold with him, sick as he was. But she could not have stopped him. She felt his eyes on her again. Accusing. Condemning.

  Hugh laid a small heap of silver coins on the table in the low-ceilinged, dimly lit house place of the small cottage on Ludgate Hill. “There's coin, Martha, for the leech, the apothecary, for whatever Robin needs.” He twisted his large square hands together as he looked across the room to the straw pallet where his son lay and asked painfully, “Will he die?”

  The old woman who was bending over the pallet straightened stiffly, one hand at her back. “I cannot say, m’lord. He looks bad. But if, as you say, there was an evil influence in the ’ouse, then, God willing, ye’ve moved him in time.”

  She crossed herself. “Poor mite. Such a roarin’, healthy babe ’e was when I delivered ’im. An’ his sainted mother, God rest ’er soul. Never a sound out of ’er. Two days she labored, an’ never made a sound. Such a sweet soul she was.” She crossed herself again.

  Hugh swallowed. The lump in his chest, now in his throat, was painful. He was close to tears, closer than he’d been since Sarah's death, and he clung to what fortitude he could muster. Martha was his only hope. Only Robin knew her, knew that Hugh paid her a tiny pension, all he could afford, in recognition of her service as Sarah's maid and the midwife who had brought Robin into the world. No one else knew of this humble cottage. No one would find Robin here.

  Robin coughed, feebly but for an eternity it seemed to his father. The sweat of fear dampened Hugh's brow. Martha stirred something in a cup and bent once more over the pallet. She raised the boy and put the cup to his lips.

  “Get you ’ome, m’lord. There's little ye can do ’ere. Come back this evenin’ an’ we’ll see.”

  “I can’t leave him.”

  “I work best alone.”

  Hugh hesitated, then approached the pallet. He bent and kissed Robin's burning brow, smoothed the lank hair. He ached with a desperate helplessness that he had never known. And in the far reaches of his mind came the recognition that Guinevere must have felt this same hideous powerlessness to help her own children during the last dreadful months as she struggled in a net that he had cast for her.

  What did it mean to her, knowing that he now knew exactly how that felt?

  “Get you ’ome,” Martha repeated softly. “Come back this evenin’. We’ll know better then.”

  Hugh still hesitated, then with a helpless little gesture he opened the door and left the single-roomed cottage. He mounted his horse tethered at the gate and turned the charger down the hill leaving the church of St. Paul's behind him.

  The horse skittered uncertainly and uncharacteristically on the rutted lane. Hugh drew the rein tighter and felt his saddle slip slightly. He reined in the horse and dismounted. The girth had worked itself loose and it had unsettled the horse. Hugh tightened the strap, running a finger between it and the animal's belly to satisfy himself that it was once more snug. He frowned, feeling a small nick on one side of the leather. Someone in the stables was not keeping a close eye on the tack.

  That was Robin's task, of course. The care of his father's equipment in particular fell to the son's hand. Hugh's nostrils flared as he struggled with the upsurge of fearful despair. He remounted, his mouth set in a grim line, and turned his horse towards Holborn once more.

  He had no wish to go home, no wish to see Guinevere, no wish to sit beside her at the dinner table, break bread with her, drink with her. He didn’t think he would be able to keep his suspicion to himself. But somehow he must. He had to watch her. If she was plotting Robin's death, she would also be plotting his own.

  He rode into the stable yard and Tyler came running from the stables to take his horse. “ ’Ow's the lad, m’lord?” he asked with concern as Hugh dismounted. “I’ve one jest the same age at ’ome.”

  Tyler had saddled Hugh's horse earlier and had held Robin while his father had mounted. The man's sympathy had been open and genuine as he’d handed the sick child up to Lord Hugh.

  “He's in good hands, thank you,” Hugh replied, regarding the man thoughtfully. Tyler, it seemed, was certainly a man of all work as Guinevere had sai
d. Kitchens, stables, domestic quarters. He was everywhere, rapidly making himself indispensable.

  “Check that girth, will you?” Hugh said. “It slipped while I was riding home. The leather seems to have a slight nick at one side.”

  “Aye, m’lord. I’ll check it as soon as I’ve unsaddled ’im.”

  Hugh nodded and strode back to the house.

  Tyler watched him for a minute, his eyes narrowed. He’d lost the boy. Unless Lord Hugh had removed him from the bedchamber too late. It was possible, probable even. But he’d have to make sure. For the moment he’d concentrate his efforts on the father.

  Jack Stedman accosted Hugh as he entered the house through the back door. “A word, m’lord?”

  “What is it, Jack?” Hugh drew off his gloves.

  “Well, it's jest that Will Malfrey's disappeared, sir. I left ’im at Privy Seal's wicket all night an’ sent fer ’im to come ’ome just after dawn. But ’e wasn’t there.”

  Hugh frowned. “You left him there all night even though I decided there was no point in watching?”

  “ ’Twas a matter of discipline, m’lord.”

  “Ah.” Hugh would not question Jack's dealings with the men. “Could he have left of his own accord?”

  Jack shook his head. “Unlikely. He's a good man, jest a bit awkward like once in a while. But he’d never leave ’is post, I’d lay any odds.”

  “Could he have met with an accident?”

  “Mebbe, but, I don’t know, sir.” Jack shook his head again. “ ’E's ’andy with a sword an’ with ’is fists. ’Twould take a good few to get the better of ’im, I would ’ave said. But we’ve been searchin’ the alleys around.”

  “So where d’you think he is?” Hugh guessed that Jack had his own opinion.

  “That I can’t rightly say, sir. But if ’e ’appened on our man, sir, like as not, ’e’d go after ’im.”

  Hugh slapped his gloves into the palm of one hand. “If that's the case he’ll be back.”

  “Aye, sir.”