Red Adam's Lady

by Grace Ingram

Reynald was already launched. He grabbed Julitta by the arm and spun her back into the doorway. Red Adam hurtled past her and sprang on him as he clawed for the screaming girl. They grappled, reeling against the wall. Reynald, his forearm under Red Adam’s chin, tried to crack his skull against the stone. The younger man twisted lithely, back-heeled him and flung him off. He shot backward, arms upflung and whirling, and crashed against the gallery rail. With a splintering screech the rotten wood gave way. For a heart’s beat he hung poised on the edge, a yell of alarm bursting from him. Red Adam lunged, making a grab at his tunic skirts, but the falling weight was too much for him. The two toppled together to crash among the stacked trestles, boards and benches below.

  14

  Reynald breathed, but he was a dead man. Just behind his left ear the skull was dented in by contact with a bench end; the right side of his face was drawn awry, his right arm and leg twitching, and blood already dribbled from his ears and nose. No chirurgeon on earth could do anything for him. Julitta crossed herself, murmured, “God have mercy on his soul,” and rose from her knees. Red Adam, hunched on the bench, lifted his head from his hands, looked into her face and bowed it again. She considered him closely. Blood had been streaked across his brow and was trickling down the back of his left hand, and he breathed with a care that told her enough.

  “Ribs?” she demanded curtly, and without waiting for an answer nodded to Odo. He and Brien helped him out of tunic and shirt and stretched him on the bench, where he stared gray-faced at the rafters. Purpling bruises stained all down the right side of his chest; it had not been the fall, but the stacked furniture that had done the mischief. Neither her eyes nor gently-exploring hand could discern any distortion of his ribs. She acidly dissuaded Brien from prodding to learn whether they were broken, cracked or merely bruised; it made no difference to her treatment, which was to bind him tightly with half a dozen swaddling bands. The blood came from his hand; the nails of the first two fingers had been ripped back from the quick by his desperate grab at Reynald’s tunic.

  Still wordless, he twisted up and swung his feet to the floor. Again he bowed his head into his hands, and she laid her hand lightly on his bare shoulder. He had the skim-milk skin that commonly afflects his unfortunate coloring, so that she felt the scars before she saw the white network of them over his back, and remembered the novice-master with the weightiest arm he had ever encountered. Weighty indeed; she wondered at the stupidity that reckoned by such usage to inculcate in a wild boy any vocation for the cloister.

  At her bidding four men carefully lifted Reynald on a tableboard and carried him to the nearest wall-chamber. She followed. There was nothing to be done for his body, but she was mistress of this household and the duty of vigil by his deathbed was hers. She knelt again, repeating formal prayers. It came to her with a shock of candor that her only regret for this drunkard’s end was that her husband had been its instrument.

  He came after her, dressed again and moving stiffly, to stand over his victim. For a little space he watched the congested face, its flaccid left side sharply contrasted with the distorted right, his own face drained of all color but the blotched freckles.

  “As God is my witness,” he said painfully, “I intended him no hurt.”

  “Your hand testifies to it,” she said, nodding at his broken nails still oozing red. He spread his fingers and stared as though he had not known their state, bemused with shock. Presently he knelt at the improvised bier’s foot, his lips moving soundlessly.

  Father Simon bustled in. He regarded Red Adam’s plain distress with an odd mixture of condemnation and sympathy, shook his head and administered Extreme Unction. As a conscientious priest he announced that he would wait until the end, for the unlikely chance that some return of consciousness might enable the dying sinner to repent and be absolved. They waited. Odo, unbidden, had stationed himself outside the door-curtain to repel the morbidly curious.

  Julitta narrowly eyed her husband. He should be in bed easing his damaged ribs, but she knew better than to suggest it. She still resented the way he had used Avice, but compassion warred in her with anger. His own reckless tongue was responsible for Reynald’s death; by apparently granting him leave for rape and rescinding it with his next breath he had provoked the quarrel, and he knew it. This penance he had set himself. Julitta recognized that Red Adam had brought away from his monastery an unappeasable conscience. He kept his vigil through the night alone, as though unaware of Father Simon’s censorious gaze and Julitta’s own irritated concern.

  Reynald died just before dawn, without regaining his senses. When the last breath had rattled to silence in his throat, Red Adam shivered and covered his face with his hands. Then he lurched to lifeless feet and reeled against the wall. Odo was within the curtain on the instant, his arm clamped under his master’s shoulders to hold him erect. For a long moment he leaned on his servant, looking down on the dead man. “Lord, have mercy on his soul,” he said quietly. He limped out, and the priest and Julitta gazed eloquently at each other.

  Twilight was murky gray in the window-slots when she emerged and saw her husband, engaged in consultation with Sir Brien. In the raw dawn it was Sir Brien who led the troop across the drawbridge in his lord’s stead, and took the track for Arnisby and York. Certainly Red Adam was in no state to ride forty rough miles, but that he should concede as much astonished his wife. She would have expected him rather to insist on achieving it if he had to be tied in the saddle. When the men had departed he withdrew to his own chamber with Father Simon.

  Julitta found Avice huddled in a corner of the bower, half demented with terror, her face swollen almost beyond recognition from a night’s weeping. She shook her without sympathy. The silly creature invited violence.

  “Get up! You’ve nothing to fear now. Wash your face and get to work.”

  “Oh m’ lady, I’m feared! I’m mortal feared!”

  “Sir Reynald’s dead. Pray for his soul’s rest and stop blubbering.”

  “But Lord Adam killed him for me. Now he’ll take me. Oh Mother o’ God, what’s to become o’ me?”

  “Lord Adam would not touch you with the butt of his lance shaft.”

  “But they all says—they tells me—”

  “Must you believe every folly they pour into your ears? Out and get to work!”

  That would be the scandal that went abroad, murder done in a sordid dispute over a serving woman, and Red Adam had no defence against it. She herself had been the only witness who could testify that Reynald’s death was sheer accident, and few would choose to believe her. She strode away fuming, and made her anger serve her on her rounds, so that the mere whisper of her approach spurred diligence. She came to the death chamber, and stepped inside to see that the dead man had been shrouded and disposed in decency, and to pray. Red Adam stood keeping vigil at his feet, his hands clasped on the hilt of his drawn sword and his face almost as gray as the rigid one on the bier. His shadowed eyes lifted briefly to her face, but he neither moved nor spoke, and she forbore to utter her opinion.

  Lifting the curtain, she almost collided with Odo, gloomily propped against the archway. His face lighted a little as their gaze met in mutual exasperation, and he stepped after her. “My lady, can you not budge him?” he muttered. “He’ll not heed what I say; he’ll keep the deathwatch until he drops.”

  She stared, momentarily astonished; she had never thought of the influence she could exert over a man who had proved he desired to please her. She pondered a moment under Odo’s anxious gaze, an obscure distaste suddenly hardening to conviction that it would be wrong, a lessening of them both.

  “I’ll not come between him and his conscience.”

  “My lady, he’ll heed you. No rest he’s had all night, nor bite nor sup this day—”

  “It’s the expiation he has set himself, and I’ll not diminish him.”

  “What sort of wife’re you to comfort a man?” he demanded, and trod growling back to the curtain. She throttled her own tem
per, the more convinced that Red Adam, though he might have yielded to an appeal from her, did not desire comforting but upholding in his resolve. She herself was not blameless; her own edged tongue had done its share in precipitating that final quarrel. As soon as she had bidden farewell to Baldwin Dogsmeat and Adela, she returned to kneel by Reynald’s bier and share his vigil, mildly grateful to the convent that had taught her the appropriate Penitential Psalms to repeat. Red Adam, she was sure, was repeating them too. Occasionally he glanced at her, but there was no readable emotion in his drained and weary face.

  He held out until most of the afternoon was spent, and then Odo half-carried him up the stairs, berating him all the way, and helped him into the bed where Julitta had slept alone, fending off her assistance. She ran down to mix a posset of eggs, milk and hot spiced wine and bore it to him. Odo set an arm under his shoulders, but he thrust up on one elbow, reached out his other hand for the cup and silenced his tame bear’s expostulations with candid ingratitude.

  “Hell’s Teeth, you cluck like a nursemaid over a wet-bottomed brat! And I’ll not be fed like one.” He gulped, coughed, spilled the liquid down his bare chest and swore fervently. She took back the cup, signaled to Odo to get out, and mopped him dry with his discarded shirt. He regarded her warily. “And if you’re going to reprove me likewise—”

  “Not I. If you reckon your carcass beaten out of iron, you’ll learn your error without my telling.”

  “Vixen!” He sipped more cautiously at the posset, and watched her over the cup. “Odo’s a fool,” he said abruptly. “You have been light in great darkness this day, Julitta.”

  She flushed, and could find no words to answer him. He drank off the posset and lay back, frowning abstractedly at the rafters. She sat on the bed’s edge and waited, hoping that he might fall asleep; he was utterly spent.

  “That girl must go,” he announced harshly. “I’ll not tolerate her another day in my household.”

  “Avice? But—”

  “She’s been a man’s death, and never showed herself to say a prayer for his soul’s rest. If I know her, she’s done naught but wail and weep over her own senseless fears.”

  “That’s true.”

  “And I’ll not have it said I killed my comrade and dishonored my wife to debauch her serving maid. She goes.”

  That was the tale men would believe none the less, and both knew it. The murderous Lorismond blood, folk would say, and remember Lord Maurice’s vanished wife. “I cannot return her to my uncle to be forced into Cuthbert’s bed,” she said practically, “nor can I cast her adrift in a world of men. She sews well. Doubtless the convent could make use of her.” Avice was her own servant, but she would not dispute his very real aversion.

  “Deal as generously as you see fit, but she goes tomorrow, willing or not.”

  “She’ll be thankful beyond words,” Julitta replied incautiously.

  He jerked up. “Does that gutless ninny actually imagine… I’d sooner lay a wet fish!”

  Such virtue made her giggle, and he smiled reluctantly and subsided again on the pillow. He pulled the covers over his shoulders against the breeze from the window, and she rose to close the shutter. When she turned back he was asleep. She stood a long moment in the dimness, listening to his even breathing, and then sought out Avice.

  The girl plumped on her knees, fresh tears dripping from her chin, and clutched at Julitta’s gown in an ecstacy of thankfulness. “Oh, my lady, Mary Mother reward you for your goodness! I’ll be safe there. M’ lord can’t ravish me… I’ll not be made a whore…”

  “You insult my lord,” snapped Julitta. “The thought was his. He has no desire to take a—a wet fish to his bed. Stop blubbering! You must have an inexhaustible well within you.”

  And as she stalked indignantly away she knew that the girl, once safely behind the nunnery walls, would boast for the rest of her life how Red Adam had slain his comrade for her. She too would be happily rid of this creature. She had lived without a serving maid for seventeen years, and could do so a few months longer.

  At nightfall she slipped into her chamber without attendance or candle, and stood inside the door listening to Red Adam’s quiet breathing. She felt her way round the bed and bent for the straw pallet. It scraped faintly on the floor, and he stirred in the dark.

  “Come to bed, vixen,” he said softly.

  She stood irresolute, thankful for the darkness that hid her blush. “I—I meant this night—”

  “If you don’t join me I’ll return to that penitential lying.” He moved more purposefully.

  “No, you must not!”

  “No risk to you,” he added wryly, “for I’m not fit to give you pleasure or do myself credit. Come to bed, Julitta.”

  Under his words’ lightness she sensed an appeal that ended her reluctance. She scrambled out of her clothes and between the sheets, warmed by his body, and lay tense beside him, waiting for she knew not what. But he remained motionless, and she relaxed, and with belated solicitude inquired, “Do your ribs pain you, my lord?”

  “No. Your bandages are the worst of it; itchy as Pharaoh’s plague of lice.”

  “They are apt to be.” She matched his dryness.

  For a long time he was silent, but Julitta, aware of every breath he drew, knew that he was not asleep. Abruptly his voice came from the dark, “I never before killed a Christian soul.”

  “Without intent,” she said swiftly.

  “He’s no less dead. In his sins, with no time to repent.”

  “We cannot know that,” she answered, uncomfortably stirred. “My lord, do you not believe that Almighty God, who is our Father and knows all men’s hearts, must judge more mercifully than mankind?”

  “I wish I could. At the monastery they’d a most fearsome Last Judgment painted in the church, with Hell-mouth all dragon teeth and fire and tormenting fiends. I’ve dreamed of it again, with Reynald screeching—”

  Impulsively she reached across the few inches of impassable gulf between them and found his arm, whose slack flesh stiffened into corded sinew at her touch. Her hand slid down to his, which closed sharply on it. “You’re over-watched and sorely troubled, my lord. Say a prayer for his soul’s rest, and then sleep.”

  “Sensible Julitta,” he murmured, faint amusement in his voice. He repeated under his breath words that she knew well enough to say with him, translating them from the Latin in her mind. “Suffer us not, at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from thee.” Presently he slept again, still loosely clasping her hand. She did not withdraw it, and only when she slept herself did their fingers unclose and fall apart.

  15

  Under no circumstances could the Abbess be cordial, but she received her guests with civility, and even found an acid graciousness in response to Red Adam’s courtesy. She accepted his warning of Scots over the Border composedly, and was scathing about a Prince who bedded with such vermin and fools who conspired with him, but her manner intimated that no Scot would dare thrust his nose inside her sacred precincts, and to all his urging of precautions she returned only cool thanks. She had very little to say to Julitta, beyond admonishing her to give thanks that Almighty God had raised her to such high estate. Her tone conveyed that she reckoned Him grievously misguided. Julitta sensibly said no more than courtesy demanded and left it to her husband to cajole this wasp of a woman.

  The Abbess stiffened when he presented Avice, but his words and Julitta’s silence somehow implied that she had cast out a potential rival in jealous fury and he was the one anxious to bestow her safely. He warranted her virtuous and diligent, and the Abbess conceded that a sewing maid might be of use to her community and he certainly could not permit a helpless maid to be cast adrift. The discreet presentation of a chinking bag ratified the agreement, and she smiled thinly at Julitta’s resentment. That was unfeigned; the bag contained all too high a proportion of Brentborough’s resources in coined silver.

  A bell tinkled, an elderly nun appeared, and A
vice was whisked away without a backward look or a word ot gratitude. Julitta wondered grimly whether she would be as happy after a few days of this notorious martinet’s governance. Red Adam expressed his obligation. In the bleak parlor, under the northern window, he looked gaunt and drained, his resemblance to Lord Maurice more marked than usual. Then the Abbess formally blessed and dismissed them, and the door thudded at their heels.

  Red Adam wriggled his shoulders and released his breath. “Is she wholly compounded of vinegar and venom?” he murmured irreverently. “I’m properly humbled that you once would have returned to her rule rather than marry me.”

  A weight lifted from Julitta, and she laughed at him over her shoulder. “A desperate choice,” she mocked, leading him swiftly along familiar passages towards the boarders’ parlor, and rejoiced in the flash of his teeth as he strode after her.

  Uproar greeted their entry into the parlor, and a wave of small dogs surged about their ankles. Skirts they knew offered no pleasurable sensation to testing teeth, but they snapped and snarled about Red Adam’s spurred riding boots, and scrabbled yelping at his shabby hose. Suppressing his natural impulse to kick them the parlor’s length, he stood fast amidst the onslaught, while their mistress fluted ineffectually from her armed chair deep in cushions.

  “Sweetings, sweetings, you must not! Come back to your own lady—come back, wicked doglings!”

  Up rose her aged serving woman from behind the chessboard, and trod into the yapping pack. They scuttled before her, voicing indignation, and subsided about their mistress’s chair and in her gown’s folds, ears pricked and nostrils quivering. Restraining giggles, Julitta took her husband’s hand and led him to the chair.

  “Pardon my silling darlings; they have not seen a man in months,” said the high voice.

  “Lady Cecily, this is my husband, Lord Adam de Lorismond.”

  The plump old face, softly wrinkled like a hand long immersed in water, beamed at them. She lifted a hand from the pair of pups slumbering in her lap and held it out. Her dark gown was liberally furred with dog hairs, and the parlor stank like a kennel. Red Adam bowed, smiling, and raised her pudgy fingers to his lips. “God save you, Lady Cecily.”