Almost Innocent

by Jane Feather

  She found the fur-lined mantle and brought it on deck. Lord de Gervais had reappeared and was standing at the deck rail, a frown between his brows as he felt the more accentuated lift and drop of the hull across foam-tipped waves. The sky had taken on a salmon tinge.

  “Something feels awry.” Magdalen stepped up beside him, huddling into her cloak. “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” he said with an easiness he did not feel. “See, we are passing the Needle Rocks.”

  Magdalen looked to her left, seeing the wickedly jagged points rising from a surging sea at the furthest edge of the Isle of Wight. She shivered slightly and without thought slipped her hand into the pocket of her mantle, her fingers closing over the beads of her rosary, her lips moving in silent prayer. There was a boiling to the sea at the base of the rocks that made her think of hell and the damnation that awaited the unshriven.

  They passed the rocks and the natural shelter provided by the island. The open sea had a different quality. It was gray, not blue-green, and the swell was more pronounced. Magdalen thought of venison pasty and wished she had not.

  “I think perhaps I will go to my cabin.”

  Guy merely nodded as if he barely heard her, and indeed he was hardly aware of her departure. Something did feel awry. He went to the forecastle, where the master and the helmsman stood, eyes fixed upon the great square sail that tugged with the wind, stretched taut as a drumskin. The helmsman’s hands on the wheel were white-knuckled with effort as he fought an increasing power.

  “What is it?” Guy asked.

  The master shook his head. “A squall’s coming, my lord. ’Tis the only explanation. I’ve known it like this before, and it’s always the worst when it creeps up on you. There was no sign of this one an hour ago, and still it’s little more than a stirring in the air.”

  “Why do we not turn back?” Guy could feel the sailor’s apprehension and looked over his shoulder to the still reassuringly close bulk of the Isle of Wight.

  “Tide and wind’s against us, my lord. We’d never round the Needle Rocks. We’ve no choice but to sail as far into open water as we can, then reef and sit it out, hoping we’ll not be blown onto rocks.” The master turned abruptly and bellowed over his shoulder to batten down the hatches. “You’d best get below, my lord.”

  Guy stood for a while longer at the rail, watching as their sister ships went through the same maneuvers as Elizabeth. The wind was increasing and there was a wet, bitter edge to it. The waves slapped against the hull now, the spray no longer a gentle refreshing mist but an icy sheet. The sky had darkened to an almost night-dark, although it was but five in the afternoon.

  “My lord, you’d best get below!” The master’s shout was lost in a sudden scream of wind. The sea ahead boiled, rose in a swirling cone, and hurtled toward the tossing craft that seemed to Guy to be now made of matchwood. A gray-green trough opened up before the hull, and Elizabeth dived nose first into the flat wall of water.

  Water slammed on the deck with a solid, bruising impact that knocked Guy from his feet. He grabbed the deck rail and hung on with every last ounce of strength until the ship lifted her nose out of the trough and the sea ran from her decks. But the next wall of water was racing toward them, and he hurled himself at the companionway hatch, recognizing that he could be of no use on deck and was in imminent danger of being swept away. Through the raging of the wind and the roaring of the water, he could hear the horses on the ships nearby, their hooves thudding against the wooden partitions of their stalls, their shrill neighing snatched away by the tempest.

  Below, there was a merciful cessation of the battering tumult of wind and sea. But there was utter darkness, no possibility of candlelight in the ship’s bucking, twisting, heaving fight with the ocean. He could hear cries from all around, cries for mercy as sailors and passengers called upon the saints and prayed for deliverance. He stumbled into his own cabin and flung himself onto his pallet, aware that only by lying prone would he escape injury. Miraculously, he was not sick, although he could hear, through the thin bulkheads, the acute wretchedness of his fellow travelers. The dreadful moans of his squire and page, stretched retching upon the floor of the cabin, filled his ears like souls in torment. After an hour, when there was no surcease and the cries around had become weaker with exhaustion and more despairing, he crawled off his pallet, stepped over his still vomiting attendants, and made his unsteady way to Magdalen’s cabin.

  His eyes had become accustomed to the darkness by now, and he was aware of the bodies twisted upon the floor, their cries for mercy and deliverance mere broken groans. Magdalen was lying upon her pallet, and she made no sound.

  He stumbled over to her, fear a vise around his gut. The vessel heaved and he fell to his knees, grasping the edge of the shelf on which Magdalen lay. He saw then that she was clutching a chamber pot as if it were a lifeline, but her eyes were flat and open.

  He touched her face. Her skin was clammy, but she responded to his touch. “I am bleeding,” she said in barely a whisper, then with a wrenching moan rolled over the pot in her arms, the slight body convulsing as she retched with no possibility of relief.

  For a moment, he did not understand what she had said, then he saw the darkness puddled beneath her before she fell back on the pallet again. The image of Gwendoline rose in dread memory. He turned desperately toward the two women on the floor, but one look was enough to convince him of the hopelessness of expecting help from that direction. They were both prostrate, beyond helping themselves, let alone their lady.

  “I am bleeding,” Magdalen said again. “It will not stop.”

  He staggered across to the stack of chests, opening them feverishly, searching for something that would soak up the flow. He found the sheets and towels in the third chest and came back to the pallet. He lifted her gently, feeling the wet stickiness against his hand as he pushed her skirts aside and spread a double sheet beneath her. He wrapped a towel around her body, drawing it up tightly between her legs in the desperate hope that it would staunch the bleeding.

  “Is it the child?” she whispered, accepting his attentions with the helplessness of a newborn infant.

  “I believe so,” he said softly. “Try to lie as still as you can.” He lifted her head, holding the pot for her when she moaned again in desperation, but she had nothing left inside her and fell back in the torment of unrelief, while the violent pitching and rolling continued unabated.

  Her stomach cramped violently, and sweat stood out on her forehead. “I am going to die.”

  “You are not going to die!” He spoke fiercely out of his own fear. “I am going to fetch you something that may ease you.”

  “Do not leave me!” Her hand sought his, terror in her voice at the thought of being left alone again in the dreadful darkness, with the flooding blood, the cramping of her stomach that was inextricably bound with the dreadful retching, yet had a different cause. “Do not leave me,” she entreated again.

  “Only for a minute,” he promised, and resolutely put her hand on the cover and struggled to his feet.

  He was gone no more than five minutes, but when he returned she was weeping soundlessly with pain and terror at her body’s betrayal.

  “Drink some of this.” He unscrewed the top of a leather flask and put it to her lips. She turned her head from the powerful, stinging aroma, but he was insistent and finally she opened her mouth. The fiery liquid burned her throat and settled in her stomach, making a hole of fire, it seemed.

  “More,” he said. She swallowed again, and imperceptibly some ease came to her tortured body. The cramping became less painful the more she swallowed, and a great lassitude swamped her. Even the violent pitching of the ship ceased to matter as her body gave up the struggle.

  Throughout the night, he remained beside her, changing the soiled sheets and towels repeatedly, dosing her with the aqua vite whenever her body seemed to be about to wake up to pain and nausea again. He had no idea whether the powerful spirit would have a dele
terious effect in the long run, but beside the need to ease her present torment, such considerations were irrelevant. She slept fitfully, and he agonized over the bleeding that seemed not to abate throughout the long hours of darkness.

  At dawn, the storm finally blew itself out. The ship, heavily reefed, came head to wind, and they could all draw breath after the night’s beating. Ruthlessly, he roused Erin and Margery from their own exhausted unconsciousness. They staggered up on their pallets, whey-faced, and looked in horror at their lady, who seemed barely conscious, the blood-soaked linen piled around her.

  “Water, my lord,” Erin managed to croak. “We shall need hot water.”

  “You shall have it.” He left the cabin and went on deck, gulping the clear, cold air with relief after the fetid stench below. The master was distracted, assessing the night’s damage, which seemed amazingly to be confined to two broken spars. He had little time for his passengers’ woes, but agreed to the lighting of a brazier in the cook’s cubby beneath the forecastle. Guy instructed his deathly pale page to see to the heating and supplying of water to Lady Magdalen’s women. Then he went to a sheltered corner of the deck and breathed deeply, trying to still his panic.

  An hour later, he was aware of a soft voice at his shoulder. He turned to see Erin, still white and trembly from her own ordeal. “Well?” The one word came out more harshly than he had intended, but he was afraid.

  “My lady has lost the child, my lord,” Erin said.

  “I assumed as much. But how is the Lady Magdalen?”

  “The bleeding has slowed, my lord, and I believe she will recover. But she is much weakened.”

  Relief cast a golden glow over the gray morning, tipped with rose the greasy, lethargic swell of the sea. The loss of the child was a grave setback for Lancaster’s plans, but at that moment Guy de Gervais gave not a damn for those plans.

  “I will come below and see how she is.”

  In the cabin, he found Magdalen in a linen shift, lying on clean sheets, her face and lips still colorless but her breathing even. She opened her eyes as he stood above her, his body casting a shadow from the faint light at the porthole.

  “My lord?”

  “Aye.” He took her hand. “You will be well soon enough, pippin. It is no great matter.”

  Her fingers tightened feebly around his. Throughout the dreadful reaches of the night, an intimacy had been forged between them that changed their relationship in ways she did not yet understand. “But I think my lord duke will consider it to be a great matter,” she whispered through her aching throat, scraped raw with the violence of her sickness. “The child was to have made firm the Plantagenet claim to the de Bresse lands.”

  “You will make firm that claim,” he said. “You are the rightful heir to your husband’s lands, and you are a Plantagenet.”

  “Yes, I suppose that is so.” Her eyes closed. She had not had long enough to become accustomed to the idea of the coming child to feel more than minor disappointment at its loss. Such losses, after all, were a commonplace occurrence. “I seem to be very sleepy, my lord.”

  “Then sleep.” He bent and brushed her brow with his lips. Her skin was cool, the earlier clamminess gone, and for a moment he was almost light-headed with relief. He was not going to lose her as he had lost Gwendoline. The comparison was formed before he could prevent it, and when he examined it, he knew it to be the truth in all its implications.

  The little fleet limped into Calais harbor in the early afternoon of the sixth day. Guy sent his squire ashore to see about accommodations and then conferred with his companions over the storm damage to men and horses. They had lost five horses, all of which had contrived to break legs in their wild, terrified trampling and pounding and had had to be put down. Two grooms had suffered injuries in their efforts to restrain the animals, but apart from the debilitating weakness engendered by ten hours of racking seasickness, Guy had reason to feel they had been let off lightly.

  The squire returned with the information that the nearest abbey large enough to offer their entire party accommodation was at St. Omer, some twenty miles inland.

  Guy frowned. They could not make twenty miles before dark. Magdalen was fully recovered; the miscarriage had occurred too early in the pregnancy for any extended ill effects, and youth and general good health had their usual advantages. But she had not left her cabin since that storm-tossed night, and he did not want to tire her with a journey of any distance, bumping over ill-paved roads in a horse-drawn wagon.

  “Take the Lady Magdalen’s women and go to the largest inn in the town,” he instructed. “Arrange a privy chamber for the lady. Her women can see to its preparation with their own linens and hangings. Any kind of accommodation will do for myself.”

  The men would have to fend for themselves. They could seek quarters with willing townspeople, or unwilling as the case may be, or make camp on the beaches or in the surrounding countryside until the morning.

  He went below, finding Magdalen sitting fully dressed on her pallet. She was brushing her hair, but she put the brush aside, a brilliant smile lighting her face when he entered the cabin.

  “Are we to leave this ship now? I do not think I will ever again sail on the sea.”

  “I fear you may have to,” he said, returning her smile, as unquestioning as she of the new bond they shared. “Unless you intend never returning to England. Come, I am going to carry you on deck.” He lifted her against his chest, and her arms went naturally around his neck, her head resting on his shoulder.

  “I’m certain I could walk, but this is much more pleasant.”

  There was a coquettish note to her voice, and her eyes sparkled up at him. His body stirred in response, but he said severely, “Magdalen, I am not interested in hearing such observations.”

  “But I think you are,” she said softly, and that clear determination chased the coquette from her eyes, bringing to him a shiver of premonition, a heady intoxicating rush of blood. Before he could say anything further, she moved upward in his arms, her hands gripping his scalp with a fervent urgency as she brought her mouth to his in a heated conjunction that drove all else from his mind but the warm moistness of her mouth, the curve of her body beneath his hands, the press of her breasts against his chest. Her mouth tasted of honey, her skin smelled sweet as new-drawn milk, her body in his arms lay soft and tender as an infant’s, yet with all the pulsing ardency of aroused womanhood.

  For too long he yielded to the moment she had orchestrated, the union she had compelled … yielded because she was drawing him ever closer to that center where swirled danger and passion beyond previous knowing. This was a kiss in which a man drowned, he in her, she in him, a kiss bearing no relation to past kisses, which were as milk and water to the fire and ice of this joining of mouths.

  But reality at last forced its way between them. He dropped her on the pallet as if she were a burning brand. “God’s blood, Magdalen, what devil drives you?” He ran his hand through his hair, touched his still tingling lips. “You are not a free woman. Would you embrace adultery? ’Tis a mortal sin.”

  “I love you,” she said simply. “I do not see it as sinful. I said long ago, after the Lady Gwendoline died, that I should never have married Edmund, but you would not listen.”

  “Stop this!” His voice shook with the fear of his own unleashed desires. “It is dangerous madness that you talk. Your wits are addled.”

  Stubbornly, she shook her head. “They are not. I do not know what is to be done about Edmund, but perhaps I will be able to make him understand.”

  Guy stared at her, for the moment convinced she had indeed lapsed into some madness, perhaps brought on by her ordeal. “Your husband is dead,” he said finally.

  She shook her head. “If you believe that, then I do not understand why you would talk of mortal sin; but he is not dead. I know it.”

  Guy turned on his heel and left the cabin, slamming the door behind him. His anger was directed as much at himself as at Magdalen. Sh
e had acted on an impulse that he should have been able to forestall, or at least cut short. But he had been lost, with neither will nor power to alter the course of those moments, and he knew without a shadow of doubt that he must keep away from her if he was to avoid a repetition.

  Magdalen was carried up to the deck by a stalwart young squire and placed in a litter, her women walking beside her. She caught a glimpse of Guy giving orders to the sergeant-at-arms, but he did not glance in her direction. At the Coq d’Or, she was put to bed in a chamber overlooking the market square. The sheets on the straw mattress on the square box bed were her own, as were the hangings, and the floor had been energetically swept by Margery herself when the lackadaisical efforts of the inn’s kitchen wench had failed to satisfy. These amenities were small compensation for the noise, however.

  The chamber was directly over the inn’s main room, and shouting, laughter, the occasional burst of song drifted up through the cracks in the ill-fitting floorboards. From the square outside came incessant street noises, the rattle of iron wheels over the cobbles, the shouts of street vendors, the brawling of drunken sailors. The smell of fish was pervasive. The inn stood in the shadow of the church, and over all, the bells rang for the day’s offices, until Magdalen’s head was fit to burst and she knew even the bumpy road would be better than this.

  She sent Erin to ask Lord de Gervais to visit her chamber, but the girl returned with the message that my lord was too busy to come to her. He would hear any message through her maid.

  Magdalen chewed her fingernail in frustration. “Ask my lord, then, how long he intends that we should remain in this place, for my head is splitting.”

  Guy was no happier with his own accommodations, a cramped and dirty loft where black beetles scurried into the corners and the reek of fish oil came from the great barrels set against the wall. However, he had no intention of continuing their journey until the morning, and Magdalen’s petulant message did nothing for his temper. He advised Erin, somewhat sharply, to tell her lady to put cloth in her ears if the noise troubled her.