by Grace Ingram
“Julitta?” Then the questioning in Adam’s eyes turned to comprehension; for the first time his mind reached out and picked the thought in hers in that union that would strenghten with their shared years, and his words even echoed her own. “Yes; where else could she be?” He stood up. “Sweyn! A close guard on all three until first light!”
The sky was gray over the lead-gray sea, dimming the moon’s last light, when they picked their way over dew-sodden grass, between rocks and gorse clumps, down the headland’s side. There were witnesses enough; the prisoners and their guards, Erling and Hakon, Baldwin, Giles, Wulfstan and Ivar, and Father Simon who had passed half the night in the castle. After one false cast in the half-light Julitta found the grassy path where their horses’ hoofprints were still plain, though blurred at the edges by rain, and so past the basin from which the rusty stream trickled, to the Roman ruin. All the time her certainty grew surer, so that an eerie thought fastened in her mind that the wronged woman’s spirit called on her first lawful successor for justice. They thronged in the doorway, and she glanced once at Constance to see fear breaching her hardihood. Without hesitating she walked to the heap of rubble.
“She lies under these stones.”
Men crossed themselves, called on their Saints, flinched back. She stooped to pick up a squared stone and toss it aside. It clattered against the wall, and all started. She turned her head. Not a man budged, but the whites of their eyes glinted uneasily. Then Adam stood beside her.
“In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti,” he said softly in the silence, and lifted his token stone. Hakon and Ivar broke from palsy and started to shift them, truly-squared mason’s work, of a size for easy handling. Adam’s hand closed on Julitta’s, and she remembered that the validity of his own tenure was in question. Then she glanced aside at Constance’s rigid face, and doubt had no place there. The dawn paled about them. Stones rattled. The lad Geoffrey was shivering, his hands gripped to his breast. Then Hakon checked, a stone in his hands.
“She is here.”
Leaning, Julitta saw the double gleam of arm bones, the oblong wrist joints, a fan of fingers. A momentary flinching, and then the two men went furiously at the pile, hurling stones clear until they had uncovered the skeleton. Shreds of cloth clung to the bones, two ropes of dank hair trailed over its ribs, and curled within the bowl of its hips lay the unborn babe’s crumbling bones. Hakon stooped, fumbled, rubbed something on his tunic-skirt and held out a blackened silver brooch.
“Lady Bertrade—she always wore it!” Sweyn said hoarsely.
But Adam bent and delicately moved aside hair wisps from the triangular dent crushed into the skull’s temple, that all might see it.
“I—I never believed Lord Maurice killed her,” Giles muttered.
“Not he,” Julitta declared confidently. “It was his leman murdered her.”
“No! It was accident—sheer mischance!” Constance protested sharply, and then realized her self-betrayal and caught breath in a gulp. Shocked, comprehending stares turned on her.
“We’ll have the truth,” Adam commanded quietly. “She surprised you and Lord Maurice here in your guilt.”
She looked about her at condemnation and sullenly capitulated. “We were coming away, and there she was in the doorway, holding her horse’s bridle and screeching at us. Nothing Maurice could say would pacify her; she was demented with jealousy. A dull plain fool. What had she to squall for? One stupid woman couldn’t content Maurice, but she was his wife. She raged that she’d have me out of her household that very hour. Then she fell—it was pure mishap—”
“Don’t lie! You struck her down,” Julitta corrected her. “I’ve seen you aid mishap.”
“Someone had to quiet her,” she justified herself. “Maurice was too soft. And she fell awkwardly—always clumsy, she was—and hit her head on the corner stone. An accident. Her horse took fright at the smell of the blood and bolted, clean over the cliff. I wanted to throw her after it to look like a riding accident, but we heard the grooms following in search of her and all alarmed at the noise of the fall, and it was too late. So he went to meet them and tell them she’d gone into the sea—by God’s favor the tide was in—and I dragged her here. Later we buried her under the stones.” She shrugged. “But she’d raised talk, and I was over a month gone, so inside the week Maurice had me away to that nunnery to avoid worse scandal.”
A shocked clucking came from Father Simon. “Murder and adultery! She stands there in mortal sin, unrepentant, while Hell gapes to engulf sinners!”
“Haven’t I done penance?” Constance demanded savagely. “All these years—waiting, bound to that thick-witted fool, denied my rightful place? And Maurice—sons I could have borne him in lawful wedlock, and kept out that upstart tourney scavenger! But he was squeamish, vowed he’d confess and denounce me if Bertram died aught but a natural death, and I’d no knowledge of simples. Seventeen barren years in his household, and he never touched me again! And he died first—cheated me! Always I’ve been cheated!”
Baldwin soberly crossed himself. “She’s gallows-ripe,” he said.
That was apparently Constance’s first intimation that others might not view her expediencies as indulgently as she did herself. She started back; her hands jerked into claws, her bitter stare went from face to face until it fastened full on Julitta’s. “All your doing, you little whore! I should have killed you before you wedded!”
Adam stepped between them. Ivar whipped out his dagger. Hakon seized her from behind by the elbows and wrenched her round, thrusting her among the guards, who roused from paralysis to hold her fast. She snarled at them.
“A rope, my lord?” Giles suggested grimly.
Adam looked down at the pale bones stretched on the dark earth, round the condemning faces, at the trapped woman. A gull sailed across the sky, faintly blue now, and shrieked startlingly in the hush. He lifted his head to watch it pass, and Julitta knew all, like her, remembered what the carrion birds had done to Odo’s body, laid in the wall-chamber with covered face. Geoffrey whimpered, his hands at his mouth.
“Sweyn!”
“My lord?”
“Take her to the gate and put her out.”
Sweyn frowned disapproval and jerked a thumb at the two men who held her. Giles, privileged by his knightly status, said bluntly, “You’re as soft as ever Maurice was, my lord.”
Constance shrugged free and straightened herself, fair as the coming dawn. “Come, my son!” she invited Geoffrey. “Heart up! There are new ventures for us.”
He recoiled. “No! No!” He reached desperate hands to Adam and Julitta. “I’m fruit of adultery and murder—hers—let me go back—submit to the abbot and confess my folly—”
“You need not,” Adam offered. “I’ll provide for you, kinsman. You promised, I think, to do as much for me.” A wry smile twitched his mouth.
Geoffrey shuddered. “All I want is to take the vows and never look on a woman again!”
“My own son—” Constance began.
Geoffrey flung to his knees at Adam’s feet, clawing at his tunic. Adam put a hand on his shoulder and nodded to Sweyn. The two guards swung her about and forced her away.
“Make for York!” Baldwin advised her, brutally practical. “An army’s there, and soldiers aren’t fussy.” He added, as the blue gown disappeared beyond the broken wall, “In the end, one will cut her throat.”
Adam hauled Geoffrey up. “I’ll arrange all, lad. Go now with Father Simon.” He waited until the priest had led him out, and then turned on William of Chivingham.
That man summoned a scowk, an imitation of past menace. “The victory’s yours, and my friends all dead men about you. You’ve only to kill me, and complete your vengeance.”
Adam considered him. In that shadowless light he looked neither victorious nor vengeful, but tired to death. “You’ll make reparation for all losses,” he began, and then, in sudden revulsion, “Take yourself home, you fool, and contemplate your folly f
or the rest of your lifetime. I’ll reckon myself amply requited.” He looked to Baldwin. “See him away, and have someone take up the poor lady’s bones.”
He caught Julitta’s hand and drew her from the ruin, out beyond the tumbled walls and up the hillside until they looked out over the sea. Streaks and feathers of fire floated on the golden sky, and the clouds in the blue zenith flushed pink. Radiance grew behind the horizon’s bar.
Brightness too fierce for eye to gaze upon winked at them, grew, became the sun’s rim. The gulls wailed about them. The air was gold, and their shadows suddenly flung long and black behind them. Julitta looked up at her husband, who closed his arms upon her. His smile turned all at once to a jaw-cracking yawn.
“All I want is to sleep a week—with you, vixen.”