Almost Innocent

by Jane Feather

  Guy moved at a more leisurely pace toward them. Edmund had flung himself from his lathered mount and stood looking around him, his eyes wildly seeking Guy de Gervais. Guy took in the condition of the horses, the dust-coated, red-eyed, disheveled appearance of Edmund and his companions. The cool space that always settled around him before he went into battle came to him then. This was a battle greater than any he had fought, and he must win it. He must win it for Edmund and for Magdalen and for little Zoe. He could feel his heart beating slow and steady, the relaxation in his muscles that came before he would require of them the ultimate exertion.

  “I give you good even, Edmund.” He stepped into the circle.

  Edmund spun round to face him. His eyes were feral in his livid face, his lips a thin drawn line, the exhaustion of a man who has pushed himself physically and spiritually beyond endurable limits etched upon his countenance. He said nothing but began to fumble with his mail-plated gauntlet while the group around them stared, for the moment uncomprehending.

  “No!” Guy’s voice rang out in the sudden silence. The one word was invested with so much authority that Edmund’s fumbling fingers were for a moment stilled. Then he shook his head, like someone momentarily blinded, and began again to wrench at his gauntlet.

  “I said no!” Again the commanding voice rang out. Edmund’s eyes began to focus as old habits pushed aside the fog of his rage-born, single-minded purpose: habits of obedience to that voice, habits of trust in that voice.

  “Don’t be a fool, man!” Guy spoke again with the same force. “Come with me.” Without waiting to see that he was obeyed, he turned on his heel and strode out of the fascinated circle and down to the river.

  Edmund stood irresolute for a minute. He could hardly throw down his gauntlet to the man’s back. His eyes ran around the circle, and he read their knowledge of what he had been about to do. Once the gauntlet lay publicly upon the ground, the path was immutable. But he had intended it to be so.

  He wrenched off his glove and almost ran after Guy de Gervais, whose broad back, the set of his red-gold head, the long, easy stride from the hip were all so familiar, had so often provided the ultimate reassurance in danger and uncertainty.

  Once out of earshot of the audience in the camp. Guy stopped and turned, waiting for Edmund to reach him. Edmund was breathless; his silver-laced gauntlet was in his hand. With a sweeping gesture, he flung the gauntlet at Guy’s feet.

  Guy said quietly, “You have dropped your glove, Edmund.” He turned and walked away a few paces as if the thrown gauntlet were of no importance.

  Edmund stood where he was. “You have wronged me!” he declared, his voice carrying on the still evening air.

  Guy paused. Without turning round, he said, “Pick up the glove, Edmund.”

  “You refuse my challenge?” It was inconceivable that a knight should do so within the laws of chivalry.

  Guy remained with his back to Edmund, but he spoke clearly. “When you have heard what I have to say, you may issue your challenge if you so wish. Then I will take it up. But for now, you will retrieve your dropped gauntlet.”

  Deflated, robbed suddenly of the driving purpose, the absolute knowledge of the wrong done him and the only redress he could take, Edmund bent to pick up his glove.

  Only then did Guy turn around, and there was deep sorrow and a wealth of compassion in his eyes as he looked at the young man in his bewilderment, his hurt, his unutterable exhaustion. But he allowed none of that to sound in his voice. “You are too weary to hear me sensibly or to discuss anything without resorting to foolishness. You and your companions will sup and take your rest. In the morning, we will talk of this.”

  “I will not break bread at your table.” Edmund spoke with revulsion. “You have made a whore of my wife.”

  Guy shook his head wearily. “Nothing will be gained by this intemperance, Edmund. You will eat and you will sleep. Tomorrow, you may call your wife whore, and you may call me what you will, but not now! It is understood?”

  Edmund yielded again from the same force of habit. He turned with de Gervais, and they walked together back to the encampment. His own traveling companions were already taking their ease at the long table set beneath the trees, tankards of wine at their elbows, relaxation flowing through their travel-weary bodies. They had been vouchsafed no reason for their journey, but now understood its purpose although not what lay behind that purpose. But they also understood that there were to be no dramas that evening. Their lord had lost the febrile intensity that had kept him in the saddle these last two days, although without that intensity, his soul-deep unhappiness was more in evidence.

  Guy courteously invited Edmund to take his place at the table. He talked of this and that, casual but ever watchful, engaging his knightly guests in conversation. Edmund was silent throughout, and it was from one of his companions that Guy learned that the Sieur d’Auriac had not left Bresse with the other contenders at the tourney. He made no comment, although he was in no doubt as to the significance of the information.

  When they had supped, he gestured to a group of tents clustered to the right of the encampment. “Sirs, I beg you will take your rest. You have need of it, I believe, and those tents are at your disposal if you so wish.”

  He remained at the table after they had left, sipping his wine, brushing idly at moths diving into the candle flame. Mosquitoes whined from the marshy sedge beside the river, but he barely noticed them. Had Magdalen broken her oath? Or did Charles d’Auriac, and therefore the de Beauregard clan, lie behind this diabolical situation?

  If he could not persuade Edmund to withdraw the challenge he was so determined to make, then he must in honor accept it. And in honor, he could not kill the man he had wronged. So he must allow himself to fall beneath the other’s sword and lance. But how was it possible to do that? He had all the reflexes of a man accustomed to fighting for his life; they were intrinsic to the way he thought, the way he moved. How could he lose them at will? Or control them? And it would be the equivalent of taking his own life—a mortal sin from which, logistically, there was no hope of absolution. Only confession and absolution would bring him to a state of grace.

  He felt the terror of hell’s torments as he looked into the candle flame. They were very real terrors, an eternity of damnation in indescribable torment. At least the pains of this world had their limits. The tortured body on this earth finally found peace. While he lived, he could endow a convent, have masses said for his soul, buy some redemption for past sins. But there was nothing he could do to avoid damnation if in effect he took his own life.

  But with Edmund’s blood upon his hands for such a cause, he could not endure his own life.

  He took no rest that night.

  Dawn broke, clear and cloudless. A heron skimmed over the river. Edmund de Bresse emerged from his tent. He yawned, stretched, and for a moment looked like a young man with not a care in the world. He saw Guy de Gervais, still sitting on the plank bench beneath the trees, just as he had left him the previous evening. He turned and went down to the river, splashed water on his face, untrussed in the seclusion of the bullrushes, then walked back to the bench beneath the willow trees.

  Guy’s page brought a pitcher of ale and a round of wheaten bread to the table. The lad looked uneasy, aware of the strange, threatening atmosphere hanging over people who seemed to be behaving in perfectly ordinary fashion—except that his lord had not sought his bed all night and was looking gray and haggard in the unforgiving light of morning.

  “Leave us, Stefan,” Guy said. “Bring water to my tent in half an hour.” He poured ale and handed the tankard to Edmund. “Drink, and then we will walk away from here and talk of what must be talked of away from the ears of others.”

  Edmund followed the instruction, accepting now that Guy de Gervais would direct the situation. He was refreshed, calmer, but nonetheless resolute after his night’s rest.

  They walked away from the encampment, far along the riverbank until there
was no possibility of ears, accidental or otherwise, to overhear them. Then Edmund spoke with the fierceness of the previous night, but without the hysteria.

  “You have wronged me. You have made a whore of my wife and bred a bastard upon her body. Will you deny this?”

  Guy shook his head. “I can deny the terms but not the facts.” He heard Edmund’s whistling breath at this admission and spoke again swiftly. “In a minute we will talk of both. Did Magdalen tell you of this?”

  “What difference—”

  “Did she?”

  “Yes, I suppose she—” Edmund stopped, remembering that dreadful scene. Magdalen had not told him. He could see her now, standing so still and quiet, her hands opened in defeated admission when he had hurled his accusations at her. But she had not told him.

  Slowly, he shook his head. “She did not tell me, but she did not deny it.”

  “Who told you?”

  But no one had told him. Just whispers … innuendo … odd little remarks that had somehow formed a picture. “No one told me. But what difference does it make?” His anger resurfaced. “You do not deny that you—”

  “Edmund, this is important.” Guy interrupted him again. “What part did Charles d’Auriac play in this?”

  Edmund was silent.

  “He did play a part, didn’t he?”

  Edmund nodded. “He seemed to know that you … that the child … He said things that made me suspect. But what difference does it make?” he cried again.

  “Not much, perhaps,” Guy said quietly. “But one must give him credit for his cleverness. It is a brilliant strategy, designed, you understand, to remove you from this earth, as they once failed to do.”

  Edmund stared. “To remove me? How?”

  “I think the de Beauregards rather assume that in fair combat I would prevail,” Guy said, his voice as dry as the desert wind. “You would die at my hands. They would not be implicated. They have but to remove Magdalen, and the de Bresse fealty would lie open for the taking. Charles of France would be grateful, and the de Beauregards would be once and for all revenged upon Lancaster and most fittingly through his daughter.”

  “Revenged upon Lancaster?”

  “I think it’s time you knew the truth. It is John of Gaunt’s secret, but he has kept it from you long enough. Let us walk a little way.”

  Edmund listened to the dark tale of that night in the fortress at Carcassonne, of his wife’s birth amid blood and treachery. He heard of Isolde and the power she had to entrap, to bring men to their deaths when it suited her clan, and he heard, beneath the measured tones, and the temperate language, the unspoken parallels.

  “Magdalen has that power,” he said.

  Guy nodded. “But she is innocent, Edmund. Her mother’s family will use her and the power she has been given to destroy us both, but Magdalen herself is not responsible.”

  “She betrayed me.”

  Guy said nothing. There was nothing to say.

  “And you … you took from me what was mine. I loved … love … her.” Edmund’s anguish now stood alone, his desperate rage somehow exhausted, only his sense of betrayal left.

  “You were dead,” Guy said. “I believed you to be dead. And I too loved … love … her, Edmund. But I swear to you that had I not believed you dead, I would have cut off my hand rather than break faith with you. I will go from here. Neither you nor Magdalen will ever see me again. You are both young, and you have a life and a love to share. Do not throw it away at the manipulation of the de Beauregards!”

  The last sentence was spoken with a fierce desperation. Edmund looked around him, at the blue morning sky, the dawn mist on the river. A flock of curlews rose calling over the bullrushes, and there were marsh marigolds and rich yellow buttercups beneath his feet. There was a sweet taste to life, and he remembered the long months of agony as he had fought to hold on to that. Would he throw it away now?

  “What happened to my child? The child she was carrying when I was attacked.”

  “There was a fearful storm on the voyage over. Magdalen lost the child then.”

  “And then she bore yours.” Bitterness laced his voice. “She bore your child and pretended it was mine.”

  “It seemed the best course,” Guy said with difficulty. “But I will not expect you to acknowledge my child as your own. I will take her, if you so wish it, and you and Magdalen will begin anew.”

  Edmund said painfully, “Magdalen would never give up her child.”

  “I believe she would, if you asked it of her,” Guy said. “She will understand that you cannot love another man’s child, cannot be expected to nurture another man’s child as your own.”

  Edmund thought of Magdalen and her baby. He saw her sitting beside the window, her head bent over the child at her breast, the soft curve of her mouth, the lovelight in her eyes. “I could not ask it of her.”

  Guy felt a great peace enter his soul. He knew he could not himself have asked it of her. “Go back to your wife,” he said softly.

  “She does not love me,” Edmund said, in pain and bitterness. “It is you she loves.”

  “She has always loved me,” Guy said, as softly. “Since she was a child. She told me so first after my wife died, the day before you and she were to be wed. I took no notice, thinking it but the infatuation of a child. But she is a Plantagenet, Edmund, and they are a passionate breed. When they love, they love hard. It is for you to teach her to respond to your love.”

  “She will never forget you.”

  “I will become a memory in time. She will bear your children and as she loves them, she will love you. You will grow together in love.” How it hurt to say such things, to say them with the sincerity that must convince Edmund. Did he truly believe that he would become a faded memory for Magdalen? Did he wish it?

  No, he didn’t wish it, and he didn’t believe it. But he knew he must try to do both.

  “Go back to your wife,” he said again. “You have left her alone, and she has need of your protection.”

  “She believes that only you have the power to protect her.” The bitterness was still there.

  “Then you had better convince her that she is in error!” Guy spoke sharply, as if impatient with a show of petulance. Edmund flushed.

  “You have proved yourself on many a field, Edmund,” Guy said, gently now. “In knightly sport and in battle. No one will impugn your courage or your ability to defend those who look to your for defense. And if your wife does so, then it is for you to correct her.”

  “It seems I have much to accomplish,” Edmund said with a wry smile. But it was a smile that warmed and eased Guy de Gervais. Both the smile and the words told him that he had won this, the hardest fight he had yet fought.

  “Then go to it,” he said. “As soon as your horses are sufficiently rested, for I dare swear you will ride them as hard on the return as you did on the coming.”

  “The spur will be different,” Edmund said.

  Guy de Gervais knelt slowly on the grass, among the marigolds and the buttercups. “I ask your forgiveness for the wrong I have done you, Edmund. And I ask you to believe that it was not meant.”

  “Ah, no!” Edmund put his hands out to the kneeling man, knowing absolutely at this moment that Guy de Gervais would never deliberately have injured him. In fact, in the deepest recesses of his soul, he now acknowledged that he had always known it. “I do believe it, and if there is aught to forgive, then I do so freely and with all my heart.”

  “And you must forgive Magdalen,” Guy said.

  “I love her; how can I do else?” Edmund seized Guy’s hands, pulling him to his feet. “I will make her love me.”

  Guy nodded. “Go back to the camp. I would be alone for a while.”

  Edmund left him immediately. Guy watched him go, saw the renewed spring in his stride, felt as if Edmund’s anguish had simply been passed on to him, to augment his own burden. And he felt it to be a just penance.

  He walked for an hour along the rive
rbank, recognizing within his grief the relief that he no longer bore the weight of deceit. It was over, and there was every hope that Edmund and Magdalen would now be able to begin their life together anew, unsullied with betrayal. Edmund had too generous a soul to visit vengeance upon the child that was not his. And Magdalen … Magdalen had affection for Edmund and a deep well of sensitivity and compassion. She would not withhold herself in her husband’s need, and in time that affection would deepen. They would have babes of their own and …

  But he could not follow the thought any further, however much he believed he deserved the self-flagellation. He must return to the camp, send Edmund off to his wife, and put on his own life. There would be work for him to do in England, and in that work he would find surcease.

  He gave order when he reached the camp that they would remain until after dinner and resume their travels at noon. The horses of the de Bresse party would be sufficiently refreshed by then, and for himself it mattered little if they only made a half-day journey.

  If any speculated as to what had caused the precipitate pursuit of Edmund de Bresse, they kept their speculation to themselves. It was clear enough at dinner that the two men were in accord, that there were now no gauntlets about to be thrown, no challenges issued and taken up. The food was good, the wine flowed freely, the shade of the willows kept the midsummer sun from roasting the diners, and if there was a haunting sadness in the blue eyes of Lord de Gervais, then it was no concern of his guests.

  The lone horseman careening down the ridge to the encampment was seen first by one of the men-at arms standing watch on the perimeter of the camp. He called out the alert that was then taken up by the herald.

  Guy stood up, shading his eyes against the sun. He had little difficulty recognizing the figure crouched low over a long-tailed gray stallion. Olivier rode abysmally, slouching and jouncing like a flour sack. Apprehension took solid form. Only news of Magdalen could have brought Olivier, riding so recklessly, upon them.