Almost Innocent

by Jane Feather

  Magdalen looked startled when her husband pushed open the door of the bastion room. She was sitting on her favorite perch on the broad stone sill. “Why, my lord, how did you know to find me here?”

  “Lord de Gervais told me.”

  A needle of betrayal drew a bead of heart-blood, and she turned her head back to the window without a word.

  “You must return to our guests,” Edmund said, stepping into the room. “Indeed, Magdalen, it is most discourteous of you to absent yourself in this manner.”

  “I know it.” She turned back to him. “But I cannot endure my cousin’s company. It has always been so.”

  “Lord de Gervais told me. But you must not let that lead you into discourtesy.” He spoke gravely, finding the task of upbraiding his wife a strange and uncomfortable one, yet at the same time feeling a prickle of pleasure. He had the right, and exercising it implied an intimacy that could only afford him gratification and reassurance.

  “I loathe him!” she said, softly fierce. “He means me harm, Edmund.”

  “I will not permit him to harm you.” He took her hand tentatively, afraid she might withdraw it. But she let it lie in his.

  Guy de Gervais had said those same words to her, and she had believed him implicitly. She did not believe her husband had the same power to protect her from harm, but it would benefit neither of them to show her doubt. She smiled and slipped from the windowsill. “Yes,” she said. “I know you will, Edmund. Let us return to our guests; it must seem strange that we are both absent.”

  Charles d’Auriac settled down to observe. He had no other plan for this visit. The next step must wait until Guy de Gervais had left de Bresse on his return to England. But he would put the opportunity for observation to good use. Before vespers that evening, he made the acquaintance of the baby, the daughter of Edmund de Bresse.

  The Lady de Bresse was walking in the pleasaunce with a party of guests, minstrels playing softly from the rose garden as the afternoon dipped into evening. She carried the child in her arms as she strolled, occasionally breaking off her conversation to smile down at the baby, who was wide awake, gray eyes examining her surroundings with a placid intelligence.

  “Your daughter, my lady?”

  At d’Auriac’s quiet observation, Magdalen jumped, and her arms tightened, instinctively protective, around the child, whose mouth opened on an equally startled wail.

  “Hush, pigeon,” Magdalen whispered, rocking the child gently. Zoe’s cries ceased and she stared unblinking at the Sieur d’Auriac, bending over her.

  “A beautiful child,” he commented. “Her hair is a most unusual color.” He smiled, looking across to where Guy de Gervais stood to one side of the garden party, as watchful in his own way as d’Auriac. The dying sun set his bare head aflame.

  Cold, an icicle of steel, twisted in Magdalen’s belly as she followed the direction of d’Auriac’s eyes. Edmund was standing beside Guy, his hair as dark as night.

  Abruptly, Magdalen moved toward the two men, not thinking but suddenly desperate for the protection the two would offer the child who in some sort belonged to them both. “My lords, do you not think Zoe has grown apace in the last days?” She held out the child to them.

  Guy had not missed her panic. He had felt it although he could not hear what had been said. Now he took the child from her and immediately felt her relaxation. It was as if, with the child in his arms, Magdalen felt safe. “She is twice as heavy as when last I held her,” he said calmly, his eyes locked with Magdalen’s as he imparted his reassurance. Reluctantly depriving himself of the joy of holding his daughter once again, he handed the baby to Edmund. “What think you, Edmund?”

  Edmund took Zoe, still a little awkwardly, but his proud smile as he gazed upon the child brought the anguish of remorse rising, gall and wormwood, in Guy’s soul, and it brought a deep satisfaction to the observant Charles d’Auriac.

  “I will take her within,” Magdalen said hurriedly. “It is near time for vespers, and she should be in her cradle.” She took the child and moved to the gate of the pleasaunce, where Erin stood waiting to take the child as soon as her mother should decide she had had sufficient of the evening air.

  Charles d’Auriac noticed other things than the red-gold down thickening to a curly thatch on the child’s head. He was aware of the currents of unhappiness running between Edmund de Bresse, the Lady Magdalen, and the Lord de Gervais. He was aware of them because he had the nose for distressful secrets, could smell them out as a predator can smell on the wind the blood of an injured prey.

  He saw the way Edmund de Bresse looked at his wife, followed her with his eyes, in moments of repose gazed at her with a hunger that d’Auriac understood well. The man lusted after the woman, that Charles could understand, but there was something else as well. Something else that he wanted from her that she was not giving him. That, Charles did not understand, but he did not trouble himself over it. All that was important was that the husband was as bound in the serpentine coils of her sensuality, in the hot, whirring promise of her body, as were de Gervais and d’Auriac. Such a husband would be fertile soil for the seeds Charles would sow. His observation of Guy de Gervais offered him little information except that the man held himself aloof from the woman, and Charles d’Auriac knew from his past visit that that was unnatural for Magdalen de Bresse and Lord de Gervais. So what could explain such a withdrawal? It was a rhetorical question Charles asked himself.

  The three days of jousting seemed interminable to Magdalen. But this time, it was not simply boredom that made it interminable. She had reached a point of desperation that matched Guy’s. Now, it had to be over quickly. She had come to accept that it was over, that she had to face her life with the last ten months fading into a memory that only the reality of her child would underpin. The present knife edge of have and have not was all but unendurable. And that knife edge was compounded by her cousin’s presence. The close of these three days would see the departure of Charles d’Auriac as well as Guy de Gervais.

  So she sat in the loge and smiled, waiting for the final melee that would bring present torment to an end and begin the misery of the future. In her lap she held a handkerchief of Bretonne lace, delicate as filigree. When the rival contestants in the melee entered the lists, riding up to the loges to acknowledge their interested ladies, she stood up and leaned over the rail.

  “My Lord de Gervais. I beg you will carry my gage with my prayers for your safety and success.” She held out the handkerchief.

  “With honor, lady, if I have your husband’s permission to do so,” Guy said, not a flicker of his surprise evident in voice or look.

  Edmund wore Magdalen’s scarf of gold tissue tied around the golden falcon on his helmet. A tinge of honest pleasure showed on his cheekbones. “My lady shall have two champions this day.”

  Guy bowed his acknowledgment and reached to take the flimsy piece of lace. “I have a pin, my lord.” Magdalen leaned further over the rail and fastened the favor herself to the sleeve of his jupon. “God and my heart go with you,” she whispered, and it was as if she had given him her final farewell.

  He let his visor drop and turned his horse, riding to the far side of the lists, his own team of combatants falling in beside him.

  Steel clashed, mighty blows fell upon helmets, horses charged, wheeled, pounded the earth, sending great clods flying up to scatter the spectators with dust and mud. Unhorsed men reeled, dazed and battered, to be helped from the stockade by their attendants, supported to the apothecaries in the tent set aside for their ministrations, or, if their wounds were not too severe, to their own tents.

  At the end, there were three knights of Guy de Gervais’s side left mounted and but one of the opposing side. Magdalen’s two champions and Charles d’Auriac were the three victors.

  “A well-fought joust, my lords,” Magdalen said, even as she thought of the violent struggle, the hideous battering blows that had been given in the name of friendly rivalry and knightly sport. />
  “I would beg a favor also, cousin.” Charles d’Auriac put up his visor, his face etched with the physical strain of the last violent hour. “It may be after the event, but I would claim a reward for championing my Lady de Bresse.”

  Magdalen plucked a flower from the vase standing at her elbow. “My lord.” She tossed it to him, although she knew it would have been more gracious to have handed it to him. D’Auriac caught the bloom neatly, but something flared in his eyes, and Magdalen felt again that graveyard fear.

  She did not know how she endured the feasting that night. The great banquet that drew the tourney to a close also, it seemed to her, was putting an end to all possibility of happiness in the lifetime to come. She ate almost nothing, toying with a little fish aspic, pushing a lark pasty to one side of her platter, spurning the swan and peacock.

  “Why do you not eat?” Edmund lowered his head to ask the question against her ear. “It looks most strange in you. As if you do not find your own hospitality good.”

  “I have no appetite,” she said, her voice as low as his. But she allowed her page to serve her a portion of stuffed roasted suckling pig with mushrooms, and she nibbled on a fruit wafer when dessert was passed, sipping the accompanying spiced wine, normally her favorite drink, although tonight it was tasteless on her tongue.

  She tried to respond to Edmund’s efforts to cheer her, but her smile was brittle, her attention abstracted, and after a while he gave up. He had become accustomed to her strange abstractions although they puzzled and saddened him. He did not know what else to do except leave her in them, hoping that the reason for them would be revealed in time, or that maybe they would just go away and the Magdalen he remembered would be restored to him. She may not have loved him, but she had never been less than friendly and companionable.

  The days of revelry were to end with a magnificent display of fireworks in the place d’armes. The townspeople crowded onto rooftops and scattered over the hillside, the better to view the spectacle, and the castle servants packed the battlements. In the place d’armes, tiers had been set up to accommodate the guests. Magdalen deliberately moved away from Edmund and took a place beside Guy de Gervais. In the noise of the display and the excitement of the spectators, much could be said that might otherwise draw remark.

  Guy smiled courteously as she sat down beside him, but his eyes were wary. “Do you enjoy the feux d’artifices, my lady?”

  “I have but once before seen a display, my lord,” she responded in the same easy tone. “But I remember finding it hard to believe. There were castles and fountains in the air … and so many amazing colors.”

  “I trust you will find this as impressive.”

  A great gasp went up from the spectators as the entertainment opened with a flashing sparking facsimile of the de Bresse standard, the great golden falcon seeming to soar in the sky. It was followed almost immediately by the hissing dragon of Gervais, the rose of Lancaster, and finally the lilies of France, the last pretty compliment drawing appreciative applause from the French knights and their ladies.

  Under cover of the applause, Magdalen said softly, “I will bring your child to the chapel after matins if you wish to bid her farewell.”

  Guy turned his head to look down at her, his expression unreadable in the fizzing, exploding, color-shot darkness. “After matins.” Then he returned his attention to the fireworks.

  Edmund had still not come to bed when Magdalen crept into the antechamber where Erin and Margery were snoring beside Zoe’s cradle. Gently, she lifted the sleeping child, wrapped the blanket securely around her against the night chills, and returned with her to the big bedchamber. She slipped from the room by the internal passageway and down a winding staircase that led by a hidden door into the inner court. She could hear voices from the hall, slightly slurred now but amiable enough, and knew Edmund was still up with his guests and knight companions. He would not come to bed until certain she was asleep.

  Keeping to the shadows, she crossed the court and entered the chapel. Her eyes were unaccustomed to such complete darkness after the torch-lit court outside, and she stood against the heavy door, her heart pounding uncomfortably, her eyes straining into the blackness. Then she caught a flicker of a candle behind the altar.

  “Guy?” Her whisper sounded like a shout in the dark silence. She stepped forward, her slippered feet rustling across the cold flagstones. “Is that you, Guy?”

  The candlelight flared yellow suddenly, emerging from the darkness, and she saw his bulk shadowed against the pillar. “I am here.” His voice was soft and steady.

  Clutching the baby, she ran toward him. “I could not bear to part without—”

  “Hush,” he said gently, taking her in his arms, drawing her behind the altar. “Hush, now.”

  “Must it be?” she said, her head against his chest, the babe still pressed to her bosom.

  “It must be.” Taking her chin, he lifted her face. “One last kiss, sweetheart. I will feed upon the memory to my death.”

  It was a kiss of searing sweetness. Magdalen’s tears mingled salt with the sweetly familiar taste of their joined mouths, and her wet cheeks pressed against the weathered face above her as if she would grow into his flesh and be never parted.

  The child in her arms whimpered and snuffled, and slowly, each breath a lancination of loss, they drew apart. Guy took his daughter from Magdalen, lifting her against his face, inhaling her baby smell, burying his lips in the damask roundness of her cheeks. Her tiny hands curled against his face, the rosebud mouth pursed, suckling as if the child knew only one reason to be awake. He gave her his finger, and she gripped it in her minutely perfect, dimpled fist.

  Guy de Gervais had not wept since he had left his own babyhood behind. He had lost friends and comrades in hideous circumstances both on and off the battlefield. He had lost his dearly beloved wife after months of agonizing sickness. He had faced the fact that he must lose his second and greater love. But he had not wept. Now his eyes were brightly sheened with grief at the knowledge that this little daughter would never know her father. He would never see her smile or take her first steps, hear her lisp her first word. He would never hear her call him Father, and he would never be able to guide her into womanhood with all the loving care he had within him. So much love he had within him, and those on whom he ached to bestow it, he must put from him.

  “Take her and go,” he said, laying the child in Magdalen’s arms again and turning away from them, turning toward the concealment of the darkness behind the altar.

  She hesitated for a minute, then turned and slipped wraithlike into the body of the chapel. Her own grief was too deep for tears, like the deepest wounds that do not bleed for a long time.

  She stepped through the oak door and into the semidarkness of the court. Zoe whimpered again, and she hushed her gently, moving swiftly toward the outside staircase, now no longer concerned with concealment.

  Charles d’Auriac, standing in the doorway of the great hall, saw her emerge from the chapel. His eyebrows lifted in surprise. He remained where he was, the noise of the revelers behind him growing muted now as the day’s combat and liberal doses of malmsey took their toll. One by one, the late revelers went past him on their way to their beds. Servants extinguished candles and torches in the hall. And, finally, Guy de Gervais emerged from the chapel. He went directly to the guest hall. Only then did Charles leave his post and seek his own bed.

  Magdalen entered the antechamber, closing the door quietly behind her. Her women did not seem to have stirred in her absence. She was laying the baby in her cradle when the door to the main chamber opened.

  “Where have you been?” Edmund’s whisper was a trifle thick, and he leaned unsteadily against the doorjamb.

  “Zoe was wakeful,” she replied calmly. “I thought a little walk might soothe her. See, she is quite sleepy again now.”

  “It is strange behavior, to walk a baby in the middle of the night,” Edmund grumbled, stepping aside to let her pass
into the bedchamber. “Where would you go? I have been waiting and worrying this half hour past when I found you gone.”

  “I walked around the inner court … and went into the chapel.” She began to unpin her hair as she talked, turning away from him toward the cedar chest where her brushes and combs stood.

  “Into the chapel! In the middle of the night, Magdalen!” Edmund swayed slightly and sat down on the edge of the bed. He was undressed and in his long robe.

  “One may say one’s prayers at any time, may one not?” she replied, reaching for her brush, beginning to draw it through the rich sable tresses falling to her knees.

  Edmund felt rebuked. He knew he was a little drunk, and her assurance in the face of his vague befuddlement put him at a disadvantage that was becoming an all-too-familiar condition of their relationship. He stood up and crossed the woven carpet toward her.

  “I would do that,” he stated, taking the brush from her suddenly nerveless hand.

  Magdalen made no protest, lowering her head beneath the firm brushstrokes. She knew what was going to happen and felt now only the deep resignation she had felt when he had first bedded her. She had procrastinated long enough, and she knew she did not have the right to continue to refuse him. What did it matter anyway?

  She turned to face him when his hand on her shoulder bade her do so. His eyes were filled again with that desperate need he had shown the first day he had arrived and had since hidden from her and controlled with his nighttime absences.

  “I can wait no longer for my wife,” he declared, and she could feel the current surging beneath the rigidly held body. It was not a current that could be resisted. She would not be able to prevent him tonight even if she had intended to do so.