‘What does he depend on?’
‘God and his sword.’
Thomas had paid hard coin to retrieve me from William. I wondered if he regretted it.
The door to the house opened and Thomas emerged looking none too happy. ‘We’ll take the stable,’ he said.
‘May we not use the house?’ I knew an ale house would have a hearth and perhaps a pallet bed for travellers.’
‘No.’
‘But surely…’
‘If you wish to share your night’s sleep with a woman hanging from a beam, my lady, then you are welcome, but I have no liking for corpses and prefer to sleep in the stable.’
I felt my belly turn over in fear. ‘A dead woman?’
‘Frozen stiff. Dead about a month, I’d guess.’
Holy Virgin! What sort of place was this where a woman could be strung up from a beam in her own house and no-one would take her down?
‘Hanged herself,’ whispered Otho. ‘The pestilence came. Lost her husband, her children and her wits. What else could she do?’
This was worse. If she’d hanged herself, she was unshriven which meant her soul was wandering out there in the darkness.
‘Should we not fetch a priest?’
‘For a suicide?’ said Thomas. ‘He’d not thank you for disturbing his rest and besides, I doubt there’s a priest to be found anywhere for miles. The bishop said they’re dying by the score.’
There were no animals but the stable was dry and to Otho’s satisfaction the racks were full of hay. Thomas made me sleep in the loft but refused to follow me up the ladder, preferring to remain on the ground with the others. I remembered how in the darkened warehouse in Calais he had dared suggest that I might care to climb into the hayloft with him and wondered where the joy had gone. Once he had professed to love me but now it seemed all his tender feelings had gone and I was nothing but a burden, an extravagance he no longer wanted.
Next morning, we left before dawn as everyone was anxious to be gone from the dead woman’s house. It was colder than ever with frost on the branches and gilding the bushes.
The only people we met all day were a group of bedraggled men and women who told us they’d lost their village when men fired the thatch.
‘It were our lord’s men,’ said their leader, a squat little man with red hair. ‘They came when we were asleep. They had swords and killed our pigs. Said they had a murrain. Pushed them into the flames.’
‘Why would your lord burn his own village?’ said Thomas, disbelievingly.
‘Afeared of the pestilence. Said we were foul sinners and would bring sickness to his door. So he burned our homes and turned us away.’
It was a sad tale but there was nothing we could do. As Thomas said, it was not our quarrel and we would not be thanked for interfering. But afterwards we travelled in silence for the rest of the day.
On the fifth day it began to rain, a wet sleet blowing in from the north and smelling of snow. By midday I was sodden in my saddle and drooping with tiredness.
‘We need shelter for the night,’ said Otho bluntly. ‘And unless you wish to carry your wife home along the corpse road you’d better find her a bed.’
Thomas put his bare hand against my cheek. ‘You’re cold?’
I nodded. ‘Yes.’
He turned back to Otho.
‘How far to the crossing?’
‘Half a day, if that.’
Thomas chewed his lip. ‘Right. We’ll find somewhere in the town.’
‘There’s the priory at Tutbury.’
‘I think not. The brothers have loose tongues. I’d rather the ale house.’
I knew the River Trent crossed England cutting the kingdom in two, separating north from south. It was as mighty a river as the Thames and Otho told me its crossings were few and well guarded. Nobody could hope to cross unnoticed.
Shortly before the gates shut for the night we passed over the bridge into the town and the men began scouring the streets for a likely place to sleep.
‘We are taking you to your brother at Nottingham if anyone should ask,’ instructed Thomas. ‘You are recently widowed and we are your late husband’s retainers.’
I nodded. I would be the Queen of Sheba if he wanted me to be. Anything to be out of the rain.
The woman at the door eyed my sodden garments suspiciously. ‘Widow eh?’
‘Yes,’ said Otho. ‘Left in a sad way.’
‘So I see. Hmm. It’ll cost yer.’
‘We can pay,’ said Otho proffering two coins.
‘By the nails of Christ young man, where’ve ye been? Ye’ll not get a hen coop for that. Sixpence for the woman. She can have the dog pen. There’s been naught in it since the old bitch died last summer.’
‘Have you no rooms?’
‘No I have not. I’ve a chamber packed like a fish barrel with folks lying head to toe and men on top of their wives, and a dozen boys bedded down by the hearth in the kitchen. But yer widow can have the dog pen and the young men can take the stable. There’s straw in both.’
‘Can you…?’
She folded her arms across her massive chest. ‘Take it or leave it. There’s nowt else and ye’ll not find anywhere better, unless the lads wish to wash their wicks in the bath house down Duck Street.’ She cackled deep in her belly like a rumble of thunder.
‘It’ll do,’ interrupted Thomas. ‘We’ll take it.’
The dog pen was a narrow space between two buildings where someone had erected planks for a wall and constructed an adequate thatch. It smelled of something I didn’t want to think about, something putrid, but there was a good supply of dry straw. The door could only be bolted from outside. Otho brought me a bowl of pottage and some ale which I demolished with amazing speed.
There was raucous singing coming from within the ale-house and every so often I heard men stumble into the yard to piss in a corner. I was about to lie down when I heard the bolt undone. Thomas stood in the doorway blocking the torchlight with his face in darkness. He stayed completely still, watching me crouched on the straw. He didn’t move and he didn’t speak. I wasn’t sure what he wanted but along with the pottage and ale warming my belly I felt the remembered stirring of desire.
‘Husband?’ I said softly.
‘I wish you a good night, my lady. Get as much sleep as you can,’ he said curtly, backing away and closing the door, leaving me once more in the dark.
I woke to a noise and someone collapsing on top of me. A heavy weight crushed my chest and I couldn’t breathe. There was a hand across my face and a voice in my ear. ‘Open yer mouth and I’ll slit yer throat.’
I struggled but the man was much too strong. He pressed me into the straw. His breath smelled foul and full of drink. In the darkness I couldn’t see him. He grabbed the folds of my skirts and hauled them up. I felt him fumble at his belt and realised at once what he wanted. I tried to kick but I was pinned to the ground with his knee shoved between my legs. If there had been more room I might have been able to roll away but the walls of the dog pen were too close and the two of us filled the tiny space.
I had lain like this on many occasions, crushed beneath the weight of William’s body with him hissing obscenities in my ear, but this was different. This man, whoever he was, was not my wedded lord and master, but a stranger intent on rape. Here, I was not a wife sworn to obedience but an innocent victim.
I bit hard. The shock made him jerk his hand back.
‘Thom . . ‘ I screamed, before he hit me. A stinging blow to the face.
‘Whore!’ he growled. ‘Want it rough do yer?’
He wrenched at the top of my gown and I heard the cloth rip as his hands clutched at my breasts, squeezing them painfully.
He grunted as his groin thrust against mine. In my panic I tri
ed to turn my body to one side but I couldn’t move. With one hand he seized my chin and turned my face to his. His fat lips were all over me, his tongue pushing deep into my mouth till I began to choke while all the time he was grinding against me, trying to find his way through my clothing.
‘Agh!’ The momentary shriek of a man in agony. A strange gurgle. His arms flailed and I could smell blood as he collapsed on top of me.
‘Get his legs!’ It was Thomas.
With a horrible slither and thud the man was hauled off me.
I heard Otho’s voice. ‘That’s it.’
Thomas crawled in beside me and pulled me up until I was sitting with my back to the wall. I was shivering and felt cold. He pushed the hair out of my eyes and found my cloak to wrap over my ruined clothing. When he put his hands on my shoulders, I could feel they were shaking.
‘Did he hurt you?’
‘N-no.’ I could barely speak I was so shocked.
‘He didn’t. . . ?
‘No, No. He didn’t, but he tried to. He… he… I thought he was going to kill me.’
I could feel his smile. ‘I don’t think he wanted your life, my lady. He was after something else entirely.’
‘But he had a knife.’
‘Well, he’s dead now, knife or no knife.’
‘You killed him?’
‘Would you rather I’d left him to finish what he’d started?’
‘No.’
It was too horrible for words. A man dead. I swallowed hard and tried not to cry.
‘I’ll give you a bit of advice for next time,’ said Thomas, in a voice which carried an undertone of fury.
‘What?’
‘Pretend to welcome it. Tell him what a big man he is and how you can’t wait. A man with a willing girl rarely slits her throat and if it’s inevitable you might as well get some enjoyment from it.’
‘But I’m your wife.’
‘Yes,’ he said scrambling to his feet. ‘And my duty is to keep you alive.’
‘Your duty, Sir Thomas,’ I said angrily, ‘is to protect my chastity.’
He regarded me with an amused smile. ‘What chastity?’
In the end they could think of nowhere to put the man’s body other than hidden in the straw at the back of the dog pen.
‘I’m not spending the rest of the night with a corpse,’ I said firmly.
Thomas smiled at Otho. ‘Remember Caen?’
Otho smiled back. ‘Yes but he was a man-at arms and deserved our respect. This is just a piece of scum.’
‘Ill sit with you,’ said Thomas, turning to me.
The dog pen was small and we sat squashed together by the door.
‘Thomas,’ I began.
‘Go to sleep,’ he said, closing his eyes.
I rested my head against his shoulder and he didn’t move away but neither did he put his arm around me. After a while, when I looked up at his face, I could see his eyes were wide open. He was staring into the darkness.
Surprisingly, I slept.
We left just before dawn. The body of my attacker was dragged from its hiding place and left in a dark corner of the yard.
‘Nothing to say it was us,’ said Otho, rubbing his hands.
‘Will they raise a hue and cry?’ I asked nervously.
‘We’ll be long gone if they do and nobody knows who we are. A poor widow being taken to Nottingham? Could be anyone.’
We roused the sleepy porter to open the town gate and rode fast out along the deserted road to the north.
We rode for two days almost without stopping and then two more. At one point we crossed a wide river over a good stone bridge which according to Otho meant we were now among friends.
It was late in the afternoon when the snow came at last. I was almost asleep in the saddle, swaying forward and laying my head on Blanchefleur’s neck. I felt the first flake settle gently on my cheek, melting as it touched my skin, then another and another until the ground beneath the horses’ hooves was white and the way ahead a mass of swirling snow, grey against the blackness of the trees.
‘Hurry,’ urged Thomas. ‘It’s not far. There’s the priory. And the gate lantern.’
By now I was seeing apparitions in the dark: gigantic shapes of grinning demons; William waving a huge sword, shrieking, “You took my cloak! You can freeze to death for all I care.” His blade swooped down and severed the ties at my throat. ‘Thomas!’ I screamed as the cloak flew away in the wind. ‘Thomas!’
A hand reached out of the darkness and grabbed my sleeve. I was falling. I tried to hang on to Blanchefleur but my assailant was much too strong.
I slipped, I slid and felt myself let go as I fell into the void.
I awoke to silence. I was lying in a bed in a room I didn’t recognize and had no idea how I had got there. My last clear memory was of sliding forward onto Blanchefleur’s neck and falling into darkness.
Pale grey light from an unshuttered window filled the room. It was morning. The wall by the bed was plain plastered and decorated in an old-fashioned way with yellow curling tendrils and little brown flowers. There were no hangings except for a dull brown curtain stretched almost the whole way across one end of the room. I moved my eyes. A doorway. A chest.
The sound of a stool scraping against the floor made me turn my head. It was a child, a girl, not much more than seven years old. She had scrambled to her feet and was staring at me with wide, frightened eyes.
I smiled.
She muttered something and fled out of the room. From beyond the curtain I heard the murmur of voices and a moment later there was Thomas.
He nodded at me. ‘You’re awake.’
‘Yes,’ I replied, thinking it must be quite obvious to anyone that I was awake.
‘Good.’
There was a pause while we eyed each other.
‘Where am I?’ I asked politely.
‘Upholand,’ he said shortly. ‘My father’s manor until he lost it to the king. Now it’s ours again.’
I wondered if this was the good solid manor house where he’d promised to build me a solar.
‘I don’t remember anything.’
He smiled briefly. ‘You tumbled off your horse. Luckily for you I was there to catch you. I carried you in.’
‘You put me to bed?’
‘Yes.’
I was no longer wearing my gown but a strange shift-like garment which had tangled itself around my legs. I touched the ties at my neck.
‘This?’
‘My shirt.’
‘Oh! Where is my gown?’
‘It was filthy. I gave it to the women to wash.’
‘You took off my clothes?’
‘Yes.’
His mouth twitched in amusement at my horror. ‘I am your husband, my lady. I have the right, in case you have forgotten. And I’ve seen many women’s bodies over the years, so you can stop blushing.’
‘No, I haven’t forgotten,’ I said, covered in embarrassment at the thought of him peeling off my sodden clothes and seeing the paucity of my torn and soiled undergarments.
‘The girl will bring you some water.’
He put out his hand and ruffled the child’s hair in an intimate gesture which made my heart beat faster. As he had just told me, he hadn’t spent the past ten years without a woman, so what else could I expect? But I hadn’t counted on a bastard child to greet me in my own house.
‘Is she yours?’ I asked, afraid of the answer.
‘No,’ he laughed. ‘She’s not. Now get yourself ready. The household will expect to see you at supper.’
It seemed I had slept the day round.
The girl pattered in and out bringing a bowl, jugs of water and a large drying sheet. While she help
ed me wash, she chattered away but her accent was so strange I could only understand one word in ten. She was entranced by my hair, stroking the wet strands, sighing over the colour and the way it gleamed in the candlelight.
‘Pretty,’ she breathed.
When I was clean, she wrapped me in the drying sheet.
‘My gown?’ I enquired.
‘Wet,’ she said in reply.
This posed a problem. I couldn’t appear in the hall in Thomas’s shirt.
‘You’d better fetch my husband,’ I said and when she didn’t move, I said more clearly. ‘Sir Thomas. The lord. Bring him to me.’
She slipped out and a moment later returned with a husband who had clearly been interrupted in the middle of something more important than his wife’s clothing.
‘Yes?’
‘I have no gown to wear, Sir Thomas. Mine is wet and there is nothing else.’
‘So? Wear my shirt. Or the sheet.’ He put his head on one side and regarded me critically. ‘Yes. Wear the sheet. You look very lovely in a sheet.’
‘I absolutely refuse to take supper in a sheet, or in a man’s shirt,’ I said indignantly.
‘Then you’d better stay here, my lady, because there’s nothing else.’
He turned his back and left the room as hurriedly as he had entered. He clearly had no desire for my company whether wrapped in a sheet or not.
‘I’ll go back to bed,’ I called after him but he’d gone.
I lay in bed feeling very cross but when, later, the girl brought me some food and ale, I felt better. He would come soon, when prayers had been said and the household was ready for sleep, of that I was certain. He would be as impatient as I was.
I lay, wriggling my toes in anticipation, wondering what he would say and what he would do. But one by one the candles guttered and died, the noises from beyond the curtain ceased, and the house was still. A final bark from a distant dog elicited a curse. Then nothing. He wasn’t coming. He didn’t want me. It had been too long. After the years of waiting he hadn’t wanted to marry me and had only done so because he had been ordered. He would have left me at Bisham but it was too late. He had made his move and now he was paying for it. A single tear rolled down my cheek and I buried my head in the pillow and cried myself to sleep.
The Fair Maid of Kent Page 37