by Jane Feather
“There’s a first time for everything,” Simon responded, sitting on the bed beside her, holding flask and glass loosely between his hands. “Sarah said it was necessary for you to sleep, so sleep you will, my sweet.”
“I wish to sleep and I will do so in my own good time,” Ariel declared. “When my body’s ready of its own accord.”
“I don’t think you should talk anymore.” Simon continued to maintain his casual air. “Your voice is becoming fainter with every word.” Carefully he unscrewed the top of the vial and poured a measure of laudanum into the glass.
“No! I won’t take it,” Ariel protested, ignoring the truth of his last comment.
“Why not?”
“Because it’ll make me go to sleep!”
“I believe that’s the idea,” he said dryly.
“Yes, but it’s a horrible, heavy sleep that I can’t control. It’s not like the belladonna draught I made for you. It’s much much stronger and lasts for hours and I can’t let myself sleep like that. I need to—” The rest was lost in a violent spasm of coughing so bad that it seemed as if all the women’s ministrations had been for nothing.
Simon set the glass on the bedside table and lifted her up from the pillows, holding her against him, rubbing her back, until the convulsions finally ceased. “Here.” He poured elm tea into the cup. She took it eagerly, then fell back on the pillows again.
“If Sarah had believed the belladonna to be sufficient, she would have prescribed it,” he said. “But she prescribed the laudanum and it’s as clear as day how much you need it.” He proffered the glass.
Ariel pushed his hand away with a petulant gesture. “I won’t,” she said crossly. “I won’t take it.”
“I would never have believed such a child lurked behind that controlled exterior,” Simon remarked. “And what a disagreeable child it is.” He caught her chin, turning her averted face back toward him. “And if the disagreeable child doesn’t wish to be treated like one, she’ll know what’s good for her and take the sleeping draught without any more silly fuss.”
“You don’t understand . . .”
“Maybe not, and you may help me to understand once you’ve taken your medicine.” He slipped an arm beneath her neck and raised her head. “This could become ugly, my love. But one way or another, you will drink the sleeping draught.”
Ariel looked into his eyes and read the truth therein. “Promise you won’t leave me, then,” she said. “While I’m asleep. While I can’t look after myself, you’ll stay.”
He was profoundly moved by this plea. No wonder she slept so lightly, if she was always afraid of what might happen around her if she wasn’t constantly alert.
“I will not leave this chamber,” he promised. “Except, perhaps, to fetch something from my own chamber across the hall. Now, drink it down.”
Ariel shuddered but gave up the fight. She would trust him to watch her back as she had watched his. She opened her mouth as he held the glass to her lips, and drained it with a grimace of distaste.
“That’s my girl,” he said softly, bending to kiss her. “Snuggle down and sleep. I’ll be here.”
“The dogs will need to go out,” she murmured, slipping down the pillows. “Edgar will take them. They mustn’t be left to roam.”
“They won’t be.” He tucked the covers under the mattress. “Are you warm enough, or should the hot bricks be replaced?”
Ariel shook her head. “No, I’m too warm now.” She closed her eyes.
Simon stood watching her for a minute, a soft smile curving his lips, then he returned to the seat beside the fire, inhaling the strong herbal fumes from the skillet. The dogs settled at his feet with a heavy sigh, and he leaned back in the rocker, closing his own eyes, listening to Ariel’s regular breathing. He raised a hand and touched his scar, tracing the path of Sarah’s fingers. It had been an extraordinary thing for the woman to do, and yet it had felt curiously natural, strangely right. As if in some way she had the right to touch him with an intimacy that not even Helene had ventured.
Not Geoffrey’s son. Owen’s son. Oh, he had all the familiar Hawkesmoor features, but he had those others too. Owen’s quirky smile and the long earlobes and the large, prominent knuckles. And even if he hadn’t had those features, she would have known. She would have known the minute she laid eyes on him.
Sarah touched her breasts, wizened and shriveled beneath her cloak and gown. When her babies had suckled, her breasts had been round and full and the babes’ little milky mouths had sucked and nuzzled, their little faces pressed against the pillowy flesh. She could remember even now the astonishingly strong tugs on her nipples, the tiny curled fists pushing against her body, kneading the rich, rounded breast as the gush of milk spurted into their busy mouths. She had always had plenty of milk, more than enough for the child at her breast. She remembered the sudden painful rush of milk into her breasts at the infant’s first hungry cry on waking. It would leak from her nipples, dripping into the opened mouth even before the baby had begun to suck.
And the boy, her son, her firstborn, had been such a greedy infant and so serious about his feeding. His little brow furrowed as he suckled, his little mouth pursed, his fat little fists pushed into the nurturing globes of her flesh.
How she had loved him. How she had kissed every crease of his chubby body, every little pink toe and finger. She remembered the delicious smell of his neck, the warm, milky vanilla scent that had filled her with a liquid joy.
Sarah closed her eyes as the gig rattled over the frozen mud-ridged lane. The child had slept beside her, curled against her, and she had opened her shift and suckled him in the night when he awoke and nuzzled with his little peeping cries. He would fall asleep at her breast, the tiny milky mouth slipping from her nipple, the blue-veined lids closing over his bright blue eyes.
She had carried him with her everywhere, fashioning a sling in which he lay against her breast, soothed to sleep with her movements. And later, when he slept less, he would lie looking up, his finger pointing to what he saw, his burbling chatter filled with excitement. Such a happy child he’d been. Cooing and smiling, still as connected to her body in infancy as he had been in the womb.
Perhaps, if Owen had lived to share the joy of their child, she would have rationed her attention and her love, parceled it out between them, but in the absence of the father, the child had absorbed everything she had to give with each suckling pull at her breast.
The bracelet had fascinated him, and when he grew strong enough to sit up alone and crawl across the floor with a rapidity that had astonished his mother, he would demand it with imperious babble and pointing finger. When she gave it to him, he would sit for hours playing with it, putting the charm into his mouth, cutting his teeth on the hard shiny emerald of the little swan.
When the lords of Ravenspeare came for her, he had been toddling, crowing with delight as he tottered on his chubby little legs, running unsteadily, arms flailing like windmills, into his mother’s welcoming embrace.
It had been high summer when they’d come. She’d heard the hooves on the gravel sweep before the house. She had looked out of the nursery window and seen the four of them below, hard-faced beneath the plumed hats of the Cavalier. She’d known they would come, known from the moment her husband’s death had left her unprotected in the house just ten miles across the fens from Ravenspeare Castle. But as the months had passed and they had not come, she had begun to lose her fear, to think that perhaps she was safe. But of course she should have known that the Ravenspeares never let an insult go unavenged.
She’d gone down to them, and even now, sitting in the gig beside Edgar and Jenny, Sarah could remember the weakness in her legs as they had carried her down the staircase to the hall where the men stood in their leather riding coats and britches, tapping their shiny boots with their whips, their gray eyes cold and deadly beneath the curling fall of their wigs.
They had said her presence was required in Ely at the magistrates’ co
urt to bear witness to a land dispute arising from the havoc of the past civil war. It was a common enough summons in the years following Charles II’s restoration with the consequent storm of claims and counterclaims between dispossessed parliamentarians and the newly restored royalists. Her household staff thought nothing of the summons, and since the penalty of refusal was automatic loss by default of the disputed land, it didn’t occur to them that she would not cooperate.
And indeed she had had no choice. In soft voices they had threatened her son, even as the earl of Ravenspeare’s small dagger pressed against her ribs as he stood so close to her in the hall, a neighborly smile twisting his thin mouth, his voice dripping honeyed concern and vows of friendship for all to hear.
They took her to an inn, a secluded lodging frequented only by bargemen who came up the narrow drainage cut from the river to drink and carouse. Bargemen who, like most Fenmen, showed no interest in the affairs of others and, even if they did, knew how to keep a still tongue in their heads.
For four days the men of Ravenspeare had forced their prisoner to bear witness in their own particular fashion. They took turns with her and only when she was a mute, bleeding, befouled wreck had they left her. Even now she could still hear their laughter on the stairs while she huddled in the corner of the attic chamber, bruised, filthy, her own blood seeping from her, mingling with the vileness that they had spilled inside her. . . .
“’Ere we are, then, Mistress Sarah . . . Mistress Sarah . . .” Edgar touched her arm.
“Mother?”
The worry in Jenny’s voice pierced Sarah’s waking nightmare. She jerked on the bench as if she’d been kicked into awareness, just as they had kicked her into consciousness when they had wanted her again . . . wanted to hear her weep and plead as they plowed into her battered body. . . .
“Mother, we’re home. What is it? Are you ill?”
Sarah stumbled down from the gig. Edgar, waiting with upraised hand to help her, caught her as she half fell from the step.
“Eh, Miss Jenny, I think yer mam’s taken bad,” he said with concern. “I’ll ’elp ’er inside.”
Jenny followed them into the cottage. She touched her mother, who stood shivering beside the banked fire. She touched Sarah’s face, eyes, with the tips of her fingers. “Oh, what is it? What’s happened?” she whispered.
Abruptly, Sarah shook her head, reached up her hands to clasp Jenny’s wrists in a reassuringly firm grip. She forced a smile at Edgar, who stood in the doorway with a worried frown on his normally phlegmatic countenance.
“I’ll be off, then?” he said, a hesitant question in his voice. Sarah nodded and loosed Jenny’s hold. She came over to Edgar and took his hands in a warm clasp that spoke as loudly as any words could have done. Then she kissed him lightly on the cheek. The man blushed and backed out of the cottage. “I’ll be back to fetch Miss Jenny in the mornin’, then.”
“I’ll be ready by seven,” Jenny called, moving to stand beside her mother to wave good-bye. She put an arm around Sarah’s shoulders and was relieved to feel that the rigidity had left her mother’s body. Whatever had caused it, surely it had to do with her horror of Ravenspeare Castle.
Sarah turned back inside and sat down again at her loom, just as if she’d never left it. Her eyes rested for a moment on her daughter’s blind, intelligent countenance. One of those four devils of Ravenspeare had fathered Jenny. Not that it mattered. Jenny was hers. She had been created in torment, and she bore the marks of that violent conception in her blindness, but she was unsullied. She was pure. She belonged only to her mother.
Chapter Fifteen
“I BROUGHT YOU some dinner, m’lord.” Doris entered Ariel’s chamber bearing a laden tray.
Simon looked up from his drowsy contemplation of the fire and realized that he was famished.
The dogs sniffed at the tray when Doris set it down on the table beside the fire. “Edgar’s back, m’lord. Should I take the ’ounds down to ’im? They’ll need a walk, like as not.”
“Yes, do that, thank you.” Simon reached for his cane and stood up, stretching stiffly. He smiled at Doris, then limped over to the bed. Ariel was sleeping heavily, her breathing slightly labored. Sweat beaded her pale, waxy countenance and tendrils of hair clung to her damp brow.
“I’ve brought some lavender water, m’lord.” Doris hurried over to him, bearing a bottle of fragrant water and a cloth. “If we wipe Lady Ariel’s brow with it, she’ll feel better, even though she’s asleep.”
“I fear I’m an inadequate nurse,” Simon said ruefully, watching Doris’s deft attentions to the sleeping patient. “I believe we should anoint her chest again with the ointment.”
“I’ll see to it, m’lord. You sit down now and eat yer dinner. We wasn’t too sure what you’d like in the kitchen, but Mistress Gertrude says that if the beef and venison don’t appeal, then there’s an eel pie in the pantry, an’ she can do you a nice brook trout in butter, quick as ’op o’ me thumb.”
“This will do splendidly.” Simon sat down before the tray of roasted beef ribs and venison pasty. Besides, there was a bottle of claret, ready with the cork drawn, a salad of celery and beetroot, a substantial chunk of cheddar, a quarter loaf of wheaten bread, and a slice of damson pie with a jug of thick golden cream. The good, wholesome food of his childhood, he thought, the saliva running with the pleasurable pang of hunger. He poured himself a glass of claret.
Romulus and Remus were sitting expectantly yet patiently beside the door. They seemed to know that Doris was their key to liberty and watched her as she moved about the chamber, replenishing the coltsfoot leaves in the skillet, removing the now cold bricks from the bed, smoothing down the sheets and pillows.
“I’ll take the dogs now, m’lord, less’n there’s somethin’ else?”
“No, nothing . . . oh, ask Edgar for a report on the roan’s condition, will you? Lady Ariel is bound to be concerned when she awakes.”
“Yes, sir.” Doris bobbed a curtsy, gathered the cold bricks to her meager bosom, whistled to the dogs, and went out.
Simon ate his dinner and drank his claret in a ruminative peace. It occurred to him that this was the pleasantest evening he’d spent since arriving at Ravenspeare Castle. He liked his own company and always had done. He threw more coltsfoot into the skillet when the heady fumes seemed to him to be losing their strength, and listened to his wife’s breathing grow deeper and more even.
A sharp rap at the door, sounding more like the hilt of a sword than a hand, jerked him out of his contentment. But before he could speak, the door opened. Oliver Becket, holding a glass of cognac, stood somewhat unsteadily in the doorway, thrusting his dirk back into its scabbard.
“So, how’s my bud doing?” he inquired, his eyes squinting at the bed. “I see you’re playing nurse, then, my lord Hawkesmoor.” He laughed and stepped into the room, kicking the door shut behind him. “Poor work for one of the queen’s soldiers, I would have thought. What would His Grace of Marlborough have to say, I wonder?” His laugh rasped unpleasantly. “But then, I expect he knows that tending sickbed is all that a cripple’s good for.”
“Did you want something, Becket?” Simon inquired, sipping his claret and regarding his visitor with scant interest.
“Oh, I just came to see how my bud was faring.” Oliver approached the bed. “You’ll grant a lover’s right to be concerned, I trust.” He glanced over to Simon, who hadn’t moved from his chair, seemingly hadn’t moved a muscle. Oliver’s eyes narrowed. This lack of response to his barbed comments was most unsatisfying. He returned his attention to Ariel.
“Not a beauty, my little bud,” he mused. “No, you’d never call her a beauty, but quite an appealing creature, when she’s well. A fever, of course, can turn any beauty into a hag. And I fear our patient is no exception.” He brushed a finger over the girl’s damp face. “Lank and waxen.” He shook his head, tutting. “None of us can understand what made her act so foolishly. Can you, Hawkesmoor?”
; Simon didn’t deign to respond. He quietly sipped his claret, stretching his feet to the fire, and waited for the moment when he would have no choice but to pick up Oliver Becket’s glove.
“No, none of us can understand why Ariel would jeopardize her horse for a Hawkesmoor. Falling through the ice is not unexpected, the chit is always rash and impetuous with her own safety, but to put her horse at risk . . .” He shook his head solemnly and drank from the glass in his hand. “No, not Ariel. And most particularly not for a lost cause.” He laughed. “The gyrfalcon’s attentions to your face could hardly have made matters worse, could they?”
“I daresay she surprised us both,” Simon observed dispassionately.
Oliver stepped forward toward the fire, then something in the other man’s eyes halted his advance. He lounged against the bedpost. “Do you truly appreciate her, Hawkesmoor? Have you learned what she likes? Have you discovered that little beauty spot on the underside of her—”
“You are a bore, Becket.” Simon interrupted him, his voice still mild. “In fact, I would say you are about the most tedious and inconsequential little man I’ve ever come across.”
Oliver’s face flushed darkest red. His hand went to his belt, to the dirk in its scabbard. The other man watched him, unmoving.
“Don’t imagine she’s yours, Hawkesmoor,” Oliver declared, his voice thick with vitriol. “She belongs to us. To her brothers and to me.”
“Really?” Simon’s eyebrows lifted. His voice sounded mildly curious, but his blue eyes were as hard and bright as glacial ice. “And to think I thought she was my wife.”
Oliver’s dirk was suddenly in his hand. He advanced on the seated man.
Simon didn’t move, and his eyes remained fixed on Oliver’s face, holding Becket’s drunken, squinting, aggressive stare. “You’d draw on an unarmed man,” he stated softly.
“You have a dagger,” Oliver snarled. “Draw it and we’ll throw for first strike.”
Simon laughed, a quiet, scornful sound. “I fight my battles on the field, where they belong, Becket. Not in the chambers of sick women.”