The Heart of Darkness

by Odelia Floris

  But Gallagher stepped forward and knocked gently. ‘Brother Jacob,’ he called softly to the devoutly kneeling figure.

  At this, the monk hastily crossed himself and rose to his feet. When he turned to face them, Rowena observed that he was a fairly short man of about sixty, round but not fat, with short, sandy-coloured hair and an almost child-like face which shone with gentle benevolence and simple good humour.

  ‘You be welcome, friends, you be welcome! Come in,’ he invited them warmly.

  Upon stepping inside, Rowena was even more overcome with wonder than when she had seen the cottage from the outside. The shelves lining the walls were filled with earthenware pots and jars, and glass bottles of all shapes and sizes. From the roof-beams hung many bunches of drying herbs. There was a large wooden table in the centre of the room upon which sat a stone pestle and mortar, many pewter bowls, a small set of scales, a few lumps of golden beeswax, and scattered about the table were herbs and plants of every kind. There were long stalks of rosemary, piles of dried blue lavender flowers, straw-coloured chamomile flowers, pale silver southernwood leaves, fat red rosehips, fresh peppermint, and many more plants that she could not name.

  While Rowena was still staring in wonder at the room’s many unusual contents, Brother Jacob cast a professional eye over the boy’s injuries. ‘Sergeant, it looks like you have brought a patient to see me.’ He smiled kindly at the lad. ‘Come and take a seat over here, my son.’

  Once his patient was seated, Brother Jacob got out a pewter bowl and set it down on the table. Then he started searching the shelves. ‘Hmmm, now where did I put it...I’m sure it’s here somewhere...’ After searching through several shelves, he finally seized a small blue glass bottle with a cry of ‘Ah, there you are!’

  He pulled out the cork stopper and poured a measure of liquid into the bowl, then filled the rest of the bowl with water from the iron pot that simmered gently over a little fire in the corner.

  As he was stirring the mix, Brother Jacob looked over to Sergeant Gallagher. ‘Have you and your men been running down peasants again? Or perhaps he slipped on the cell floor?’

  Although his tone was gravely serious, Rowena detected an impish twinkle in Brother Jacob’s eyes.

  ‘Be fair, brother!’ Gallagher protested good-humouredly. ‘That was just the once, and the fool ran out right in front of the sheriff’s horse.’

  Brother Jacob began washing the boy’s face with the liquid he had prepared. ‘So he ‘slipped’, did he?’

  ‘Yes, well,’ Sergeant Gallagher replied somewhat uncomfortably, ‘he wasn’t very talkative, so Sir Richard got a little impatient.’

  There was no doubting Gallagher’s loyalty to his comrade.

  ‘Sir Richard does seem rather fond of walking on the dark side,’ sighed the monk. ‘Still, the good Lord loves all of his flock, even those whose hearts are filled with sin, for they need his love and forgiveness most of all.’

  ‘Amen to that, brother,’ said Gallagher. ‘He is not a bad man at heart, just one who has lost his way a little.’

  Brother Jacob smiled indulgently, although there was a definite hint of irony in his raised eyebrows. ‘Yes indeed. Let us hope that he finds his way back onto the path of righteousness before too many more patients come my way.’ He turned his attention onto Rowena, who had been hanging back, feeling a little shy in this wondrously strange place. While his soft grey eyes shone with a gentle kindness, their intense gaze seemed to miss nothing. ‘Sergeant, you have not introduced your young friend.’

  ‘Oh, do forgive me. This is Mistress Rowena Walden. She has been filling in as Sir Richard’s clerk.’

  Brother Jacob gave a courteous nod. ‘Nice to finally make your acquaintance, Mistress Rowena.’

  Rowena came forward and bobbed. ‘I am honoured to meet you, brother.’

  ‘That last clerk, now he was a put-upon looking fellow if ever I saw one. He looked as though he was carrying the whole world about on his back. Have you been getting on all right? Sir Richard has been acting in a manner befitting his station, I hope?’

  ‘I had a little trouble finding my way around the castle at first, but all the soldiers were very kind, and as for Sir Richard, he is—he is just as I expected him to be.’

  The monk had finished cleaning the lad’s cuts and was now carefully dabbing on some ointment. ‘Oh well, one does not tame the wolf by running from its lair.’

  Rowena smiled grimly. ‘Quite so.’

  ‘There you are, all done!’ proclaimed Brother Jacob, wiping his hands with a cloth. ‘Now, my son, you will keep out of trouble and stay away from the sheriff in future, won’t you?’

  ‘I’ll try, brother,’ the lad mumbled.

  ‘If you and your family are ever starving, go to the abbey. Father Peter always gives alms to the poor.’

  ‘Thank you, brother.’

  ‘You’re welcome, my son. It’s the least I can do.’

  * * * *

  ‘Expenses, expenses and more bloody expenses,’ growled Sir Richard, gloomily sifting through the morning’s stack of payment demands piled on Rowena’s table. ‘Sometimes I marvel that I manage to pay the men at all.’

  Rowena took out a few goose-quills. ‘I’ll make it work somehow. Last week we did not have enough to pay everyone, but I succeeded in talking that blacksmith out of charging you interest on the money you owe for shoeing the horses. I mean, twenty percent, that’s just daylight robbery!’

  ‘Damn weasel, I’d give him a good hiding if it wasn’t for the fact that he’d then refuse to shoe our horses, leaving me in even more you-know-what…’

  Rowena turned her attention away from the quills she was cutting to a point with a small knife, and looked earnestly across at Sir Richard. ‘Why won’t you tell me who is blackmailing you? How can I help you if I don’t know who it is?’

  He sunk despairingly into Rowena’s chair. ‘If he found out that I had told someone, there’d be hell to pay.’

  ‘I will not tell a soul; as God is God you have my word!’

  ‘I would really rather not say. After all, as you said, we are getting by.’

  She flung the quill pens down on the table in exasperation. ‘This man is bleeding you dry! You might just be managing to pay the weekly expenses, but the roof on the west tower needs fixing, the men need new weapons, and God only knows how you will be able to afford the work the moat so desperately needs. It’s so silted up that during a dry spell a man could walk right across and barely get his feet wet!’

  Sir Richard nervously ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Yes Rowena, I know.’

  She opened the account book lying on the table in front of him. ‘Look at all this money you’re paying to your blackmailer. Ten thousand pounds,’ she tapped an insistent ink-stained finger on the figure, ‘in the last month alone!’

  He stared grimly at the numbers. ‘Good God.’

  ‘You have to do something about it before you are ruined. Maybe you could sell off something?’

  ‘I have told you before, there’s nothing I can do except keep paying him off. I have already sold everything I can. I sold the small manor and estate near Willowmead that I bought when I came here three years ago, and the valuable suit of armour I still had from my jousting days.’

  ‘But you don’t have the money to keep paying. Unless,’ she fixed a steely look on him, ‘you are planning on marrying a rich lady? There seem to be plenty of foolish, empty-headed young damsels about who would willingly marry you tomorrow.’

  ‘I assure you, I have no intention of marrying. But it’s no matter; I’ll just increase the taxes.’

  Rowena stomped her foot in annoyance. ‘Just increase the taxes? You’ve already increased the tax rate twice in the past year! The poor people are nearly starving as it is!’ She punctuated this by slamming the account book shut and angrily turning away from him.

  But as she did so, there was a loud clatter.

  She snapped her eyes down. The goblet which had been s
itting on the table was now lying on its side, and water was spilling across the rough boards and pouring through the cracks.

  There was a screech as Sir Richard hastily pushed his chair back.

  Rowena clapped her hand to her mouth in horror. Most of the water had spilled into his lap. That dress, with its stupid long sleeves, might be pretty, but it certainly was not very practical. She was forever swiping things over with them.

  ‘Good gracious, I’m so sorry!’ she cried, pulling her handkerchief out of her pocket. ‘Let me mop that up. I’m just so clumsy, always knocking things over and bumping into things. I don’t know how I do it!’

  The sheriff rolled his eyes in exasperation, but remained seated. He had resigned himself to Rowena’s regular outbreaks of clumsiness two weeks ago.

  In a fluster, she bent down and started frantically mopping at the wet spill on Sir Richard’s thigh. Luckily, most of the water had run off, as there was hardly any gap between his black leather doublet and tall riding boots.

  Calming down a little, Rowena suddenly became aware of how close she was to him. Her hair was falling onto his shoulder, the smell of leather and his perfume filled her nose, and she could feel his hot breath on her cheek.

  She paused abruptly and looked at him. She expected him to be angry with her, but he did not look angry. Far from it—he was enjoying it!

  She started back in shock and only just managed to avoid tripping over the end of his sword.

  With a dark smirk playing on his lips, Sir Richard indicated a few remaining droplets. ‘You’ve missed a bit just there.’

  Rowena threw the handkerchief at him from a safe distance. ‘Do it yourself.’

  .4.

  Pride Takes a Fall

  SITTING on the bench against the outside wall of Becky’s cottage later that day, Rowena put a dark, juicy raspberry into her mouth. Despite the bramble scratches on her arms, she was glad she had stopped on the way over to pick berries from the heavily laden brambles growing beside the path.

  She leaned comfortably back against the wall and gave a sigh of contentment, enjoying the warmth of the late afternoon sunshine on her shoulders and the soft breeze playing in her hair. It was a lovely time of day. With the fierce heat of midday now but a memory, the air felt softer and mellower, and the light was less harsh. The first tinge of the glorious colours of autumn to come tinted a leaf here and there, and the golden wheat standing in the fields adjacent to the road was now fully ripe, its fat ears filled with the sun’s goodness.

  ‘The harvest should be starting any day now,’ she said to Becky, who sat beside her.

  ‘Yes, and what with all this rain we’ve been having, we need to get it in quick, before it spoils.’ The blonde woman furrowed her brow anxiously. ‘But all our men are still busy bringing in his lordship’s grain. Us humble folk always have to wait until they’ve finished the harvest on the Stoatley lands before we have the time to bring in our own crops.’

  ‘Is that where Durwin and the older boys are?’

  ‘Aye. We usually all help with the harvest, but this year I’m stuck at home looking after the little ones. The girl who normally minds them while I’m out in the fields came down with something nasty and had to take to her bed.’

  ‘Yes, you are a troublesome little man, aren’t you?’ Rowena cooed at baby James, holding him by his tiny hands and bouncing him on her knee. The delighted child gurgled happily back at her. ‘Isn’t he growing well? Every time I see him he seems to have doubled in size.’

  ‘He is indeed, thanks to all the food you keep bringing us.’

  ‘Ow!’ cried Rowena, her attention diverted from the baby in her lap to his four-year-old brother, who, having eaten his fill of the berries and smeared a great deal of their purple juice onto his face in the process, had started experimentally pulling at her hair.

  The little boy dropped the lock of tightly curling red hair he held in his purple-stained little hand and gazed tentatively at the hair’s owner in wide-eyed innocence.

  ‘Peter, why don’t you go and pick some marigolds? I will show you how to make a garland for your mother’s hair with them.’

  He nodded eagerly and skipped off to seek the bright orange flowers amongst the colourful jumble of plants growing around the cottage, many of them humble wild plants that had been collected from the surrounding countryside.

  With peace reigning once again, Becky turned back to Rowena. ‘You are looking unusually thoughtful today. Is something weighing on your mind?’

  ‘It’s nothing really…’

  ‘I can tell something’s bothering you, so out with it.’

  Rowena glanced up at her friend. ‘It’s just earlier today…I caught Sir Richard looking at me and…’ She trailed off as she gazed thoughtfully into the distance.

  ‘And what?’ demanded Becky.

  ‘Well, I thought he was sort of eyeing me up, you know…’

  ‘You think he might be sweet on you?’

  ‘I’m not quite sure I would put it like that, but there was definitely a certain glint in his eye.’

  Becky had been very alarmed when Rowena first told her that she was to be Sir Richard’s new clerk, telling her to be ‘most careful not to annoy him, and if he ever so much as looks at you funny, tell them Cunninghams he tried to make a fallen woman of you and refuse to go anywhere near him again’.

  The older woman looked grave and wrapped her shawl more tightly around her shoulders, as if suddenly feeling cold even on this warm evening. ‘Do you think he might be a danger to you?’

  Becky’s anxious look left Rowena in no doubt about her meaning.

  ‘No!’ she cried, though her strong words came more from shock at the idea than firm conviction.

  ‘So, do you think he might want to marry you?’

  Rowena felt even more shocked by this idea than the last one. ‘No, surely Sir Richard does not have any such ideas! He has clearly stated that he has no intention of getting married, and if dire financial need fails to persuade an unwilling man to think of marriage, surely nothing can. Even if he were interested—which he isn’t—I wouldn’t want him anyway. He might have the looks to make any woman go weak at the knees, but he is hard and cruel. No woman wants to marry a rat, no matter how devastatingly handsome he is.’

  ‘You are quite right there, dear. What really matters in a man is his character, not his status or ability to cut a fine figure.’

  ‘The Black Sheriff may well have something of a wandering eye, but I’m sure I’m in no real danger of interesting him.’

  ‘Don’t say it like that!’ her friend chided. ‘You are a pretty maid and I’m sure that there are plenty of young men out there who would agree with me. Not every lad wants a lass who’s face is so plastered in paint and what-not that he’s likely to get stuck to it if he kisses her.’

  ‘Yes, but not if they are from the nobility. All they care about is how fashionable a lady is and how magnificent a lineage she has. A maiden like me would have no chance if he was thinking of taking a wife. Sir Richard’s father was very well-bred. He was at court, you know. Lady Sabina and about half the well-born damsels in the shire would marry him in a heartbeat. In the hope of meeting him, these damsels linger on the paths through the forest which he rides along and bat their eyelashes at him when he visits their manors on business, but apparently all to no avail. They are much more fashionable and have much larger fortunes than I have. He could have anyone of them, so he is certainly not going to think of marrying me.’

  Becky shook her head, still in disagreement. But she knew any more words from her upon the matter would just fall on deaf ears.

  ‘He must have just been toying with me, teasing me and finding new ways to embarrass me and make my life difficult,’ Rowena said firmly, her tone clearly signalling that she was having no more discussion on the matter. ‘He makes no bones about the fact he does not like me, as I am always interfering in things that are none of my business, and that he only puts up with me because h
e has to.’

  Although she had silenced Becky’s objections to her view that Sir Richard detested her, Rowena still could not shake off the doubts dwelling in her own mind. Everything she knew about men of that rank and everything she thought about herself told her that she was right…but then, that look in his eyes—no, I must have just imagined it. He would never like me. Stop being silly, she scolded herself, coming out of her dreamy musings with a jolt.

  Putting the line of thought firmly to one side, she turned to another, this time wondering who might be blackmailing Sir Richard and why, but she came to no conclusions.

  ‘Look at all my pretty flowers,’ a little voice demanded.

  Rowena opened her eyes to find Becky’s little son standing in front of her. He proudly placed his spoils at her feet: a basket now filled to overflowing with vivid orange marigold flowers.

  ‘Oh Peter, they’re lovely,’ she cried, picking up the little basket. ‘Here,’ she patted the space on the bench next to her, ‘come and sit beside Aunty Rowena.’

  Young Peter was soon seated and proved a most diligent pupil, taking careful heed of ‘Aunty’ Rowena as she showed him how to fashion a garland from the cheerful blooms.

  * * * *

  ‘I’m not getting on that,’ said Rowena, distrustfully eyeing the large grey horse Sergeant Gallagher held.

  ‘Why not?’ demanded the sheriff impatiently, already mounted on his own horse.

  ‘Because I cannot ride.’

  Sir Richard stared down at her incredulously. ‘I thought all educated ladies could ride!’

  ‘Not this one.’

  ‘How the hell are you supposed to get around on shire business if you refuse to ride?’