by Jane Feather
“Come with me,” he said shortly. “Guy, would you bear us company?” He strode from the dais and through the hall, his wife beside him, the assembled company remaining on their feet until they had passed. Magdalen was suddenly aware of the stir she had caused, and her cheeks flew bright flags of color as she walked behind him. She wanted to look at Guy, who was at her shoulder, but she dared not direct her eyes anywhere but ahead.
In the court, the duke bade his wife a brusque goodnight and left her with her ladies-in-waiting, turning himself toward the stair that led to his own bedchamber and the privy room in the wall beneath. Magdalen and Guy followed.
“Well?” In the womblike seclusion of his privy chamber, the duke turned to his daughter. “You have something of considerable moment to impart, I assume. There can be no other excuse for such a public disturbance.”
“Something untoward has happened to my husband,” Magdalen said simply.
The duke signaled to the accompanying page to pour wine, then dismissed him. “What flight of fancy is this? Are you gifted with second sight, madam?” He drank, raising his goblet in salutation to Guy, who drank also.
Magdalen had not been offered wine. “It is necessary to send a party in search of Edmund,” she said, quietly determined. “I know that some ill has befallen him.”
“Your husband is licking his wounds in some congenial haven,” the duke declared harshly. “I have no time for this.”
“No!” Her voice shocked her with its sharpness. “No, my lord duke, he is not. Something has happened, and I insist you send men in search.”
There was a moment of silence. John of Gaunt looked as surprised as he felt, then a gleam appeared in his eye as he examined the intent, vigorously assertive figure in front of him. “Take heed, daughter,” he said, for the first time acknowledging her to her face. “You may have the Plantagenet temper, but remember well that I have it, too, and have been used to exercising it.”
Magdalen said nothing, but she did not drop her gaze.
“Why do you believe this, Magdalen?” Guy spoke, recognizing the appropriate moment for his own intervention.
“Because he would not knowingly cause me anxiety,” she said. “I am with child.”
The two men exchanged a look that Magdalen could not fully interpret. “You are certain of this?” her father asked slowly.
“Yes,” she replied. “I have missed my terms.”
“There have been no other signs?”
“Some nausea when I rise.”
“Your husband knows of this?”
“Yes, my lord, and is most pleased with the news. He would not risk causing me unnecessary anxiety at this time.”
The duke pulled at his neat, forked beard. “There is little point attempting a search in the dark. We will set off at first light.”
“A sizable force with torches might yet achieve something,” Guy said. “If the lady is right in her supposition, then we should not delay.”
The duke turned abruptly to Magdalen. “Get you to bed, lady, and have a care for yourself and the child you carry. You may leave this matter in my hands.”
Magdalen curtsied to both men and left the chamber by the conventional route, via Lancaster’s presence chamber.
“You see the hand of the de Beauregards in this?” Lancaster refilled his goblet, his eyes hard.
“It seems not unlikely. The removal of both husband and wife would ensure that the de Bresse fealty reverts to France. Had de Lambert prevailed in combat a l’outrance, Edmund would not have lived. Had de Lambert failed, then there was a secondary plan.”
“And the attack on Magdalen was another arm,” the duke mused. “If they used mercenaries in that attack, it is to be assumed they would have done so in an assault on de Bresse. The de Beauregard name would not therefore be involved, but Charles of France would know whom to reward, and …” He paused, staring bleakly into the ruby contents of his goblet.
“And any personal satisfaction they might gain from revenge upon the man who turned the tables on them would be for private gratification,” Guy said.
“Aye.” His voice was harsh. “They are a treacherous tribe, yet they will not understand the treachery that foils their own. They planned my death by poison, the ambush and massacre of my men, and their treachery was defeated by their own weapons. To me that is fitting, but to the de Beauregards my actions stand alone, unconnected to theirs.” He placed his goblet on the table. “And they will never forget that I took the child, a child they would claim for their own, and used her against France, and therefore against them. Therein lies the crux, Guy.”
“I will have the sergeant-at-arms organize a search party,” Guy said. “The sooner we discover if there has indeed been foul play, the better able we will be to plan our next move.”
Magdalen heard the commotion in the court an hour after the bell for compline had rung and the night silence had settled over the palace. Her chamber windows stood open to catch any breeze that might relieve the muggy air, and the sound of jingling harness, shouted orders, clattering hooves, and running feet shattered the quiet of the outer ward. She leaped from bed and ran to lean out of the window. The court was brilliantly lit by torches held aloft by mounted men-at-arms in Lancastrian livery. This was no ordinary search party. It had more the appearance of a sizable force setting forth for a skirmish. Guy de Gervais was at the head, mounted not on a palfrey but on a massive black charger. He wore a steel helmet and chainmail and carried his shield.
Magdalen leaned her elbows on the broad windowsill, propping her chin in her palms. A cold finger of apprehension touched her spine. Why must he take part in this enterprise? The party could surely be as well led by someone else. Venturing forth into the countryside at night was not to be undertaken lightly. She was afraid for Edmund, of what they would find, but she feared in her soul for Guy de Gervais.
It was a long night, spent in tossing and turning amid tumbled sheets that twisted around her as if they had a life of their own. The bell from the east tower rang at midnight for matins, then at three o’clock for lauds before she finally fell asleep, just before prime, when the palace rose under the first streaks of the dawn of what promised to be another steaming day.
“My lady … my lady …”
Erin’s urgent voice, a rousing hand on her shoulder, brought Magdalen out of sleep with a groan of reluctance. “Leave me, Erin. I am not ready to wake,” she mumbled, diving deeper into the pillow.
“It is my lord duke, my lady,” Erin said with the same urgency. “He is without and wishes speech with you. He and my Lord de Gervais.”
Memory brought her wide awake. “He is back?” She meant Guy, but Erin assumed naturally that she was referring to her husband.
A shadow crossed the woman’s face. The entire palace knew by now of the nighttime errand and its outcome. She answered evasively, because it was not her place to anticipate the men waiting outside. “I do not believe so, my lady. Shall I bid his grace entrance?”
“Yes, do so.” Magdalen struggled up on the pillows, blinking as Erin drew aside the hangings and the early light of day offered gray illumination. “But first, bring my hairbrush.” It had been a long time since Guy had come into her bedchamber of a morning, and for some reason, despite the urgent nature of this occasion, her vanity would not permit him to see her in sleep-tossed untidiness.
Erin looked faintly disapproving. Surely, Lady Magdalen ought to be too anxious to hear news of her husband to fidget about such conceits. However, she brushed the rich sable hair until it glowed in the dimness, then went to the door, where the impatient John of Gaunt stood with Lord de Gervais.
The two men entered the bedchamber. Magdalen knew immediately what they were going to say and bit her lip. “He is killed?”
“We found his horse,” Guy said gently, coming to the foot of the bed. “Dead. There was evidence of a struggle, blood upon the ground …” He fell silent.
“But you did not find Edmund?” She frowned, l
eaning forward suddenly so that her hair fell over her white shoulders and the deep cleft of her breasts showed above the sheet. “If you did not find his body, how can you be sure he is dead?”
“It is a reasonable assumption,” John of Gaunt said.
“But not a fact,” she persisted.
“No, not a fact,” Guy agreed, thinking he understood that she was having difficulty accepting such grim news and so was looking for some way of denying it. His voice was gently firm. “But there can be no hope, pippin. We went deep into the forest, following the trail where the bracken was trampled.”
“But if it was outlaws, they would surely have stripped the body and left it,” she persisted.
“That may be,” Lancaster spoke briskly. “But we must assume your husband is dead, although for the nonce we will simply let it be known that he has disappeared, so there will be no need for you to go into mourning. You now have a duty to his lands and possessions in Picardy. They must be secured for his heir.”
Magdalen touched her flat belly beneath the sheet and said nothing.
“It is only met if that child be born in his father’s house, so you will journey to France without delay. Lord de Gervais will act as escort and counselor.”
“You fear that when the knowledge of my husband’s disappearance is widespread, Charles of France will attempt to retake the de Bresse fiefdom?”
Lancaster looked a little surprised at this insight. “Yes, madame, that is exactly what I fear, and that fiefdom must be held for England. It is for you to play your part now.”
“I will of course do so,” she said slowly. “But have I not been playing it all along, my lord duke?”
“What mean you?”
“You would hardly say I have had my destiny in my own hands,” she said boldly.
“That is not women’s lot,” he replied, but he thought of her mother, who, until the last when he had taken it from her, had had her own hand on her own bridle.
Her eyes sought Guy de Gervais, and the hunger was in them again. He tried to draw back from it, wondering why she would never attempt to dissemble. But he was vibrantly aware of her naked body beneath the sheet, the slope of her shoulder, the swell of her breasts, and for an instant her intensity held him bound. He understood now that for Magdalen nothing about her husband could affect the declaration she had made to him all those years ago, and was continually reaffirming whether her husband were there or not. It was a thing quite apart from anything she might feel for Edmund de Bresse, and she would never deny it. The power of it was reaching out to him, drawing him ever closer to its center where he was sure, although he knew not how, swirled danger and passion as yet untouched.
Was this how John of Gaunt had been drawn to Isolde de Beauregard? Isolde had drawn many into that center, but none as powerful as Lancaster; and Guy de Gervais knew of the many youths lovesick for her daughter, and the many men whose lusting eyes hungrily followed her. Just as he knew that she had held her husband in thrall from the moment he had first bedded her. He wondered if she truly understood this force that had been her mother’s strongest weapon. He wondered if he understood it. He wondered if he could resist it.
John of Gaunt intercepted the look, and for a moment the present dimmed, the past surging forward. He felt the power between these two because he had felt its like, and he knew the danger in which they stood. He drew a harsh breath. It was no concern of his if Guy de Gervais made whore of a whore’s daughter … yet she was his daughter, too …
But only insofar as he could use the blood relationship for his own ends, he reminded himself with the same harshness. He had never before been in danger of losing that perspective, and the present moment of weakness angered him. He turned on his heel from the bed, breaking the spell that for a minute had held them all.
“Make your preparations for departure, lady. You will travel in the style consonant with your rank, your women accompanying you. Lord de Gervais will have a force of fifty lances and two hundred men-at-arms.”
Fifty lances … one knight or squire and two attendants for each lance—one hundred and fifty men. It was an enormous force for simple escort duty. Magdalen wondered why they would be expecting trouble on the journey. A truce existed between France and England at the moment, an uneasy and spasmodic one, certainly, but it was always thus. She could only assume they felt the need for such protection against the companies of disbanded knights and men-at-arms terrorizing the countryside.
The door closed behind her visitors, and she lay thinking of Edmund. Why was she so certain he was not dead? He must be in some trouble, but he lived. She thought of mad Jennet’s words: love and blood in her hand. There was love and blood here, she knew, just as she knew Edmund de Bresse had not departed from her life. She would not yet grieve for him, but she would do her duty by him and his child that she carried. She would take her rightful place as chatelaine of the castle of Bresse, in a land of open spaces across the sea.
She remembered Jennet’s reading of the water that long-ago day, when she had been whipped for consorting with the witch and Guy de Gervais had ridden into her life … had ridden into it and would not soon ride out of it.
The love she bore him was a force not to be denied. For so long it had been an essential, defining part of her self, comforting in its absolute certainty, growing at its own pace. It would come to fruition in its own good time; she knew that as assuredly as she knew that Edmund was not dead. What would come of such a tangle, she neither knew nor cared to know. Such future concerns seemed to have little relevance beside the fact of love and its driving force.
Chapter Five
They set sail from Portsmouth harbor two weeks later in three ships, all of which had been requisitioned together with masters and crews by John of Gaunt from their merchant owners, who had no choice but to yield them up to the prince for as long as they were required. It was standard practice and caused no comment, the merchants keeping their resentment to themselves.
Magdalen was excited. She stood at the rail of the Elizabeth as the three ships took the morning tide, square-rigged sails set fair for Calais. From the forecastle, Elizabeth’s master called instructions to the hands in a vocabulary that meant nothing to the eagerly listening girl, but all three ships fanned out over the calm waters of the Solent, running before the wind, sails bellying under the fresh breeze. The escorting force, horses and grooms, were quartered on the accompanying ships; Magdalen and her women, Lord de Gervais and his own personal retinue, and twenty vassal knights sailed on the Elizabeth, the de Gervais dragon fluttering at the masthead beside the Lancastrian rose.
Guy came to stand at the rail beside her, infected by her excitement and her pleasure in the wheeling gulls, the salt tang of spray, the easy lift of the hull across the calm, bluegreen waters of the Solent. Her attitude toward Edmund’s disappearance puzzled him. She had said with quiet assurance that she did not believe him dead and therefore would not grieve, but she would do what she perceived as her duty in his absence. Guy had not known how to respond. Eventually, he had decided that accepting her certainty could do no harm. She would come to her own realization of the truth when she was ready.
Since the day of the tournament, however, he was generally at some pains to keep a distance between them. Had he been able to behave with her in the old ways, the easy avuncular attitude he had found so natural with the child, it would have been simple enough. But he could not. Magdalen de Bresse was no child, and he was all too vibrantly aware of her womanhood and the disconcerting clarity of her gray-eyed gaze, so often turned upon him with an undaunted purpose.
This early morning, the crispness of the sea air, such a welcome change from the humid airlessness of summer in London, seemed to blow aside the cobwebs of confusion, to sweep through the chambers of his mind where lurked desires that he dared not acknowledge. He laid a hand on her shoulder, and she turned her face up to smile at him.
“Is it not wonderful, my lord? To be able to breathe again!”
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br /> It was so exactly his own sentiment that he laughed in agreement. “See, there is the Isle of Wight.” He pointed to the long shape, its outline blurred by a sea fret, crouching against the horizon. “We will pass the Needle Rocks by this afternoon. There has been many a wreck upon them.”
“But we need have no such fear,” Magdalen said, unable to disguise the anxiety in her voice. Much as she was enjoying the fresh air and the unusual motion, she held the firm belief that God had not intended people to travel upon the water. “The weather is set fair, is it not?”
Guy looked up at the sky, where a haze smudged the sun so that it showed as a diffused light against the thin cloud. “Perfectly fair,” he assured her. “But in any case, we will be well past the Needle Rocks before dusk, and there is little to fear on the open water.”
Magdalen accepted this news trustfully and drew him to a sheltered spot on the deck in the lee of the cabin housing, where cushions had been set beneath a striped canopy for the passengers to enjoy the sea air, and a minstrel was strumming his lute in plaintive melody.
There was little to do but enjoy the warmth, the gentle motion, and the enforced idleness. Dinner at midmorning was a lavish meal with venison pasties, preserved goose, fresh white bread, and a compote of mushrooms, new picked that morning in the fields outside Portsmouth. They should not be at sea for more than three days, so should suffer no more hardship than the staling of the white bread, Magdalen reflected contentedly, sipping hypocras from the pewter tankard, closing her eyes to the sun so that its warmth fingered her lids and created a soft rosy glow beneath. The lute player continued his soft plucking, and she drifted pleasantly into sleep.
When she awoke, there was a chill to the breeze, and Lord de Gervais was no longer beside her. Shivering, she sat up. “Erin, fetch me my mantle; ’tis cold of a sudden.”
Erin went to the cramped cabin where Magdalen and her two women were accommodated. Iron-bound chests containing the clothes, china, glass, and domestic linens that were part of Magdalen’s dowry were stacked against the sides. There were two straw pallets on the floor for the maids, another for Magdalen set on a wooden shelf carved into the bulkhead beneath the tiny porthole.