So Great A Love

by Speer, Flora

  “You owe me nothing, Margaret, nor do you owe aught to anyone else at Bowen.” He drew closer, the dangling bunches of herbs overhead swaying dangerously with his passage.

  Margaret was standing by the worktable in the middle of the room. She wanted to put the table between herself and Arden, but she discovered she could not move. Her knees were too weak. She stayed where she was as he took another step toward her.

  “My lord,” she said in a shaky voice, “you have a most unsettling effect on me.”

  “As you have on me, my lady. Were I a sensible man, I would stay far away from you,” he said. “Were I a decent man, I would not draw you nearer to me. Instead, I would keep you safe from my wicked impulses. But you see, my dear, I find I cannot resist your delightful perfume,” he murmured, and bent forward to kiss her behind her left ear.

  “Please, Arden.” Putting both hands on his chest she tried to push him away. She felt the hard muscles beneath his woolen tunic, felt his warmth in contrast to the cool room, and the steady beat of his heart. She spoke hastily, fearing his disturbing closeness. “Your sister could join us at any moment. If you will recall, I promised to help her make a perfume.”

  “No nun,” he said, running one finger along the margin of her lower lip, “no respectable nun, would ever wear a fragrance as enticing as yours.”

  It was too much. He was all but seducing her right there in the stillroom, with the herbs overhead in danger of being knocked to the floor each time he moved. And yet, in the timbre of his voice and deep within his eyes Margaret heard and saw the distant, terrifying void that lay at Arden's core, and she instinctively knew that mere seduction was not what he wanted. His need was deeper than physical desire, and far more desperate.

  “In the name of heaven, Arden, what do you want of me?” she cried.

  “I dare ask for nothing in the name of heaven,” he said, instantly becoming all ice and chilly distance. He stepped away from her. “If you were a wise nun, Lady Margaret, you would refuse to accept anything from me.”

  “Then offer me nothing,” she cried, close to tears of frustration over his peculiar actions and her own nearly uncontrollable impulse that urged her to go into his arms. She ached for him to kiss her, for him to sweep her up in his arms and carry her to the lord's chamber and lay her down upon his bed – or even lay her down right there, in the stillroom, on the worktable.

  How could she be thinking of such a thing? She did not want any man to put his hands on her – not ever again. Out of fear and painful memory she spoke words that expressed the exact opposite of what she was feeling. “Do not kiss me or touch me. Leave me alone!”

  “Are you two quarreling? No, you may not; I won't allow it.” Catherine came into the stillroom, as Margaret had warned she might.

  “It's no quarrel,” Arden said at once. “I came here to ask Margaret to make a scented soap for me and we were merely discussing what is suitable for a man of my character.”

  “Arden cannot decide what he wants,” Margaret said. With difficulty she repressed the urge to remark that sulphur and brimstone might be the most appropriate fragrances for him. Surely, only a demon could make her feel so many strong, conflicting emotions at the same time.

  “Once, I would have made up my mind without serious thought or question,” Arden said, his gaze on Margaret's eyes carrying a message she could not interpret. “Now, I doubt if I will ever be able to decide.”

  “If you ever do,” Margaret said, looking steadily back at him, “let me know.”

  * * * * *

  Arden left the stillroom horrified by what he had almost done and by what he had revealed. He could not in honor involve Margaret in his guilt or his eventual punishment. He could not, must not, care for her! Yet every time he was with her, he felt more drawn to her. And now he had reached the point of seeking her out, for it was only to see her that he had gone to the stillroom in the first place. It was madness.

  What made matters worse was his growing certainty that Margaret could see beneath his distant and composed exterior, could see his guilt in his eyes, that she knew he had wisely set himself apart from the society of honest men and women. Or had she, perhaps, seen only his grief and pain and, seeing them, had she decided to come to his aid as she had come to Catherine's?

  It was plain to Arden that Margaret was motivated by love. It was her love for Catherine that had enabled her to break through his sister's unhappiness and succeed in cheering Catherine out of illness and the loss of her youthful dreams. But Arden knew Margaret would not succeed with him as she had with Catherine, for his sister still retained her innocence, whereas he – he had all but lost his immortal soul.

  Chapter 13

  The wind whined around the corners of the manor house and its outbuildings, shaking doors and windows, sounding like the forlorn wails of the ghosts who were said to walk abroad on All Hallow's Eve. But harvest time was nearly two months in the past; this was midwinter, and it was snowing again. Snowflakes swirled in the wind, forming eddies thick as fog, impossible to see through.

  Each time someone opened a door the glow of light from candles or oil lamps or rush-lights turned the dancing flakes into sparkling golden particles that blew inside and promptly melted, leaving slippery puddles on the floor. For this reason, and to avoid admitting the bitter cold outside air into the carefully husbanded warmth provided by fireplaces or charcoal braziers, the doors were opened as seldom as possible, and wise men and women kept indoors.

  The folk of Bowen were growing restive at their enforced inactivity. Every inside chore saved for the wintertime, that a man-at-arms, a squire, or a stable lad could possibly do had been done, and then done again just for the sake of having a purpose for each day. The women had cleaned the interior of the manor house until it was spotless except for the mud and water daily tracked in by the men. One or two of the maidservants actually dared to grumble at the men-at-arms for not wiping their boots on the straw laid for that purpose in the entry hall.

  With no fresh meat left in the larder and no possibility of a hunting party setting out any time soon, the cook's temper was growing shorter. There was plenty of food stored in the cellars, so no one would go hungry. Even so, the menu was more limited with every meal. Cabbages, onions, carrots and parsnips teamed with pickled or dried meats soon became monotonous. There were dried apples and pears aplenty, raisins imported from more southerly climes, baskets of walnuts, and enough dried herbs to season stews and puddings until midsummer.

  But there were no fresh meats, no crisp greens available for salads, and by the odor in the cellar room where they were stored, some of the remaining fresh pears were already overripe and would have to be used quickly if they were not to be wasted. Unfortunately, the chickens were laying few eggs that could have been incorporated into a pastry or the filling for a pudding to use up the pears.

  Margaret was unhappily aware of all of these domestic details because she was once again acting as chatelaine while Catherine was ill. After three successive days of venturing out of doors into cold sunshine and bone-biting wind, Catherine had taken another severe chill. Her nose ran constantly, she suffered fits of sneezing, and her throat was red and sore, a development not helped by her frequent coughing spells.

  Having recently insisted that Catherine must rise from her bed and undertake her proper daily activities, Margaret was now in the position of advising her friend to keep to her room. Margaret sent a maidservant for a basket of charcoal and when it came, she saw to it that a brazier was placed close to Catherine's bed to keep her warm, and she instructed Aldis not to be niggardly with the fuel.

  Descending to the kitchen, Margaret ordered the cook to kill one of the few chickens left in the coop and to make a nourishing broth for Catherine from its carcass.

  “What Lady Catherine doesn't eat of it you may use to flavor a dish for the midday meal,” Margaret said. “If you need me, I will be in the stillroom, compounding some fresh medicines.”

  Back to the t
oo-small, inadequately supplied stillroom Margaret went, to search among the jars and bottles on the shelves, as well as among the hanging bunches of herbs. In the absence of a lady at Bowen, the stillroom had for some years been the cook's provenance and she used what herbs grew in the garden primarily for cooking purposes. Margaret had already used most of the horehound during Catherine's first illness. Employing the last bits of the herb, she made up a new batch of syrup in hope of once again easing Catherine's wracking cough.

  There were several bundles of mint hanging from the rafters, with more than enough leaves to brew into a hot drink that would clear Catherine's clogged nose and ease the pain in her forehead. Glad to have a reason, even if only for a short time, to put everything out of her mind except the process of making a medicine to help her friend, Margaret set to work.

  With stillroom, kitchen, and nursing chores consuming her time, she did not see Arden all day until, coming out of Catherine's room into the solar, she found him standing beside the table where he and his sister usually sat of an evening. The chessboard was not set up. Arden's fingertips rested on the empty surface of the table and he was regarding both his hands and the tabletop with a puzzled expression.

  “I have heard about Catherine's new illness,” Arden said when he saw her.

  “Her cough has eased and she is sleeping,” Margaret said. She was uncomfortably aware of the fact that in her haste to dress that morning she had not taken the time to put on her wimple. Aldis had wakened her early with an urgent request that she come and check on Catherine's condition, and so Margaret had merely bound her long, black hair into a thick braid and let it hang down her back. From Catherine's room she had hastened down to the great hall and thence to other duties and had not returned to her own bedchamber until suddenly it was late afternoon and she still had not found the time to cover her hair.

  “So, there will be no chess played tonight,” Arden said, his hand moving across the tabletop.

  “Will you miss the game so much?” Margaret asked. “I am glad to know your nightly attendance upon Catherine was not only the result of my insistence.”

  “I find the game engrossing for its own sake,” Arden said.

  “Even when your opponent plays at your sister's level of proficiency?” Margaret asked with a slight smile.

  “Will you play with me?” he asked.

  “I am sadly untutored in the game,” she responded. “I scarcely know which piece goes where.”

  “You could learn.”

  “The ability to play chess is hardly a suitable accomplishment for a cloistered nun,” she objected.

  “I suppose not,” he said, “though it seems to me that you possess a surprising number of un-nun-like skills. Lady Margaret, I do believe you will have to become an abbess immediately upon completion of your vows, or else you will be forced to give up all that you are and become the most humble of postulants.”

  His eyes caught hers, their glittering icy blue piercing into her mind and heart. Margaret suddenly understood that they were no longer talking about chess. Perhaps they never had been talking about it. In his own way, Arden was trying to answer the question she had asked of him a few days before, in the stillroom. He was trying to tell her what he wanted of her, and yet he could not be direct about it. The distant, lost quality in him would not permit him to speak his true thoughts or his true wishes.

  She could not think why it was so. Arden could be remarkably blunt when it suited him. Unless…unless there was a secret reason why he could not be open with her, a reason connected to the unhappy alteration in his character.

  Staring harder into his eyes she caught a flicker of emotion behind his cold gaze, an emotion she interpreted as fear. But what could Arden possibly fear? Then it occurred to her that in his oblique way, he was asking her for help. Help in what?

  To release him from an evil enchantment. She almost laughed aloud at the thought. It was not that she didn't believe in magic or enchantment. Margaret's great-grandmother had been a Welsh princess, and part of her inheritance from that lady was a willingness to consider the possibility of magic. However, the Church strictly forbade such belief, calling it pagan and ungodly. As a prospective nun, Margaret knew she ought to reject all such pre-Christian beliefs as quickly as they arose in her thoughts. Furthermore, she ought to perform a stiff penance for having such thoughts.

  Yet she could not think of any other explanation for the invisible strictures that bound Arden and kept him from being the whole man he once had been. For he was not whole. A part of him was missing, stolen away by she knew not what evil. Whatever it was, it had something to do with the years he had spent in the Holy Land.

  He continued to stare at her, his eyes boring into hers, until Margaret could not help but wonder if he could discern her thoughts.

  By the kindness of her own nature, as well as by the precepts of the conventual life she intended to lead as soon as she was able to leave Bowen, Margaret was bound to come to the aid of those who were diseased or wounded or in pain. Arden suffered from an interior pain so great that it had made him its prisoner. Margaret did not know what caused the pain but, having seen it reflected in his eyes several times, she did not doubt its existence. She put out her hands to him.

  “We could talk,” she said.

  “Talk?” He gave a bark of scornful laughter.

  “I am capable of intelligent conversation,” Margaret declared, not troubling to hide her indignation at his reaction to a suggestion that was kindly meant. “I can read and write. I'll wager that you cannot. Most knights can't,” she finished on a note of triumph. To keep him talking to her she was about to tell him what a help she had been to her late husband's steward because she could read and write, and count, too.

  “You'd lose the wager,” Arden said, cutting off the proud words she would have spoken. When her eyebrows rose in silent surprise, he continued his explanation.

  “It's true enough that scholarly pursuits were not encouraged among the squires fostered at Cliffmore Castle. I learned to read and write later. Elsewhere.” He snapped out the last word in a way that made it clear he was not going to expand upon the circumstances of his schooling.

  Seeing his gaze turn inward and his mouth go hard, Margaret guessed that his learning had taken place in the Holy Land. Recalling the deep scar on his thigh, she wondered if he had whiled away the days of his convalescence from that wound with a tutor.

  “My lord,” she said, retreating into the safety of formality, “unless your sister is present and we are concerned with her welfare, you and I seem to do naught but quarrel when we are together. Therefore, I think we should remain apart until Catherine is well again.”

  “We did not quarrel the night we met,” he said. “Nor on one or two occasions after that first time.”

  “I bid you good night, my lord.” Unwilling to pursue that disturbing subject any further, Margaret turned to leave.

  “Don't go.” He caught her shoulder, turning her to face him. “Don't leave me. Not tonight.” His hand wound into her hair, loosening the braid a little.

  “Why not tonight?” Margaret asked. Without objection she let him draw her closer, nor did she protest when he took her face between his hands. He needed her company. Perhaps, after all, she could be of help to him, could provide comfort and friendship to his empty heart. Perhaps she could even do so without endangering her own heart. “Why is tonight different?”

  “Because of the wind.” He lifted his head, half turning toward the windows, where wind-driven particles of ice and snow were being flung against the glass in a constant scourging. Arden shivered. “I cannot bear that incessant whine.”

  Margaret placed both of her hands on his chest, though whether the gesture was intended to push him away or to cling to him she was not sure. She only knew she needed to touch him. The look she saw in his eyes had changed. It was no longer fear that Margaret saw in those pale blue depths. It was anger. Not anger at her, she realized, but anger at something e
lse. Or someone. Her desire to help Arden grew stronger, fed by the intriguing fact she had just learned from him.

  “We could close the shutters,” she suggested.

  “We could,” he agreed, “but the sound would still be there, whining and howling in my head. How I hate the wind!”

  “Why is that?”

  “Do not ask. I cannot speak of it.” His mouth closed hard on the stark words.

  “Then, I beg you, tell me what I can do to help you,” she cried.

  “I do not desire help,” he said. “The torture of the sound of the wind in my ears is only one small part of my punishment.”

  “Arden, no.” Margaret rose on tiptoe and, filled with pity, with compassion, and with another emotion that she refused to identify to herself, she wound her arms around Arden's neck and pulled his head down to her. It was she who pressed her lips on his, offering the only distraction she could think of.

  “You don't know what you are doing,” he gasped, trying to distance himself from her.

  “Of course I know,” she said, and held on when he attempted to unfasten her hands. “I am hardly an ignorant girl.”

  “But you are, Margaret. Ignorant of what I am, of what I have done.”

  “You are a man, who hates the sound of the wind,” she whispered with her cheek against his. “Perhaps, if you kiss me, you won't think about the wind for a while.”

  “Perhaps, if I kiss you once, I won't be able to stop kissing you.” He spoke harshly and made a movement as if he would tear himself from her embrace.

  Margaret felt the trembling start down in her knees and work its way upward. Since that first night, when Arden had climbed into bed with her and had lain naked beside her, caressing her in ways she had never been touched before, Margaret had thought too often of his hands on her. Every time she saw him, even for a moment, fully clothed in the hall talking to Sir Wace or Michael or one of the other men, or on those occasions when he had kissed her, or during the evenings when he and Catherine sat over the chess board, at all of those times in the back of Margaret's mind the sensuous memory lingered.