“What will happen to Richard when your eldest brother returns from the Holy Land and must marry?” Sister Anne’s eyes turned sad with the question as she looked down at the lad.
“Hugh knows his duty to beget legitimate heirs, but he will tarry to the fulfilling of it. In truth, he is such a chaste Sir Galahad we were amazed when he presented us with this boy as his own babe. Even our father couldn’t believe that he took enough time away from warrior sports to sire a son.” Eleanor smiled. “Neither of my brothers has been in a hurry to wed. Even Robert’s greatest love has been taking care of the estates. The land has always been his wife and he has shown no more inclination to be false to her than Hugh has to his knighthood. Our parents did breed a monkish brood, although my brothers, both, would deny it.”
“What of Richard’s mother? Is she dead then?”
“So we understood. My brother said little about the mother but much about how he doted on this boy of his. You’d think none but he had ever fathered a child before. But marry he must, and Hugh will do well by Richard even when he has legitimate heirs. His wife will have to love the child too. He has our father’s stubbornness and will have naught to do with any woman who would not treat Richard as a child of her own body.”
Anne nodded. “Then God has blessed the boy with a good and loving family. It is not always so. Still it would be hard not to love the child. He shows such a sweet disposition and more grave courtesy than one would expect of such youth. Even at the height of his fever, he was never peevish. He wins hearts quickly.” She laughed softly. “Indeed, when I told Brother Thomas of Richard’s recovery, he smiled with such joy I knew he was quite taken with the boy as well. He was always eager to relieve you on the storytelling.” She lowered her voice. “Although I thought you told the better ones. You must tell me later what happened after the man in black armor arrived.”
“I don’t know myself! I have exhausted all the tales I heard as a child and was beginning to invent them. Not having the talent of Marie de France, I was most grateful Brother Thomas knew stories I had never heard.”
“He once told me he came from London. Perhaps they have tales there we have yet to hear?”
Eleanor shook her head. “We are not so removed from the latest songs and stories at Tyndal, methinks, and my father has but recently been with the king in Westminster. Surely he would have heard the latest. But come, we must tell him the happy news about his grandson.”
As they pushed open the thick wooden door, it creaked loudly. A round woman, lying in a warm pile of clean straw just outside the door, started awake. She struggled awkwardly to her feet, brushing broken bits of yellow from her robes.
“My lady?”
Eleanor smiled. “He will live, good nurse.”
The woman wiped a plump hand across her reddened eyes. “May God be thanked!” she said, raising her eyes to the wooden ceiling. Then turning to Sister Anne, “And for the skills He gave you, sister. May I tend the lad now? Is there anything I should watch for? Is he sleeping? Can he eat?” Her words, spoken in one breath of air, collided, one on top of the other.
“You may watch for a ravenously hungry boy when he awakens,” Anne laughed. “Give him what he wants but in small amounts and only after he takes the medicine I left in the footless mazer cup by his bed. It has a bitter taste. He will hate it. Later he may have some sugar for his chest but may not have both the bitter and sweet too close together.”
The nurse frowned. Little pink worry lines puckered the white skin between her brows.
“Just tell him that Sir Gawain would have taken the draught without complaint,” Eleanor said. “Should he question the word of a mere aunt, tell him that I will send Brother Thomas to confirm what I have said.”
“Aye, my lady, that should help him with the bitterness. He has grown quite fond of Brother Thomas and brightens when the good priest comes to care for him. A fine storyteller, he is, the kind brother! Indeed,” she continued with a healthy blush and a fluttering hand to her ample breast, “he became like a mighty warrior himself when he told his tales of knightly deeds.”
Eleanor smiled in sympathy at the betrayal of color in the nurse’s face. Indeed, her own heart still beat with too much enthusiasm at the sight of the tall, broad-shouldered monk. When he had first come to Tyndal, just after her own arrival, an unchaste heat had quite suffused her loins and lingered there far longer than was seemly for a woman dedicated to chastity. Although she had tried to cool her passions with abstinence from meat as well as prayer while lying face down on the stones in Tyndal’s church, she had not succeeded in quelling the lusty fires with the finality she had implored. She had met with more success on the icy floor of this castle chapel but even that had failed to banish her desire entirely.
She would certainly have preferred that some other monk accompany her and Sister Anne to Wynethorpe Castle, but her prior at Tyndal was in poor health and the man she might have chosen instead was the one best suited to remaining as sub-prior. Then Sister Anne had suggested that Thomas would be a good choice to help care for the boy. Based on his work with her in Tyndal’s hospital, she knew of his talents with the young. When Eleanor at last mentioned the possibility to him, she saw his keenness for the trip. She could only acquiesce, having no good reason to refuse him. None, at least, that she dared explain.
Now she was glad he had been with them. Richard had so taken to the monk that she was willing to suffer the all too frequent torture, however sweet a torment it might be, of lusty dreams in return for her nephew’s faster healing. When she returned to Tyndal, her confessor would be much burdened to come up with sufficient atonement for her sins of the flesh, but he was a kind and wise man. The penance he ordered might be hard, but it would be both just and humane.
The sound of running feet burst through Eleanor’s musings. A young page raced breathlessly through the entrance to the circular stairwell at the end of the passageway and skidded to a stop just in front of her.
“Breathe, lad,” she exclaimed. “Is all well with my father and brother?”
“Your lord father did not say otherwise, my lady,” the boy replied as he tried to force his soft features into a more mature expression of solemnity, “but he does ask that you attend him in the great hall forthwith.”
Chapter Three
A shrill cry pierced the icy air. One serving woman dropped her armload of laundry and rushed to the horse bearing the dead man. As she grasped the head of the corpse, it twisted around at an unnatural angle. The eyes that now stared up at her were blank, unknowing.
Falling to her knees in the melting mud, she began to rhythmically beat her breast with one clenched fist as her animal wailing spiraled heavenward. Although many quickly whispered prayers to God, those for whom the sharp keening echoed in their souls knew that only time or death would bring this woman peace.
From behind him, Thomas heard a deeper pitched moan of pain. He spun around and saw a young horseman, round-faced and clean-shaven, kicking out at a gray-haired servant who was offering to help him dismount. The man’s booted foot struck the elder so hard in the shoulder that the servant staggered backward, falling into yellowed slush. Shouting with ill-concealed impatience for a groomsman to take his horse, the rider swung out of the saddle, then stomped past the old servant who was struggling to his knees.
“That is Henry,” Robert said.
“Such cruelty to a helpless old man is inconsistent with his knighthood vow to be honorable in his dealings with the weak.”
Robert’s laugh was without humor. “Knight? Nay, he may be heir to the title and lands of Lavenham, but he will never earn his own knighthood. Henry lacks the stomach for courage, unless his adversary’s back is turned, and you see how he treats those of lesser birth.”
Thomas clenched his fists, wishing he could forget his vocation and give the Lord Henry a direct lesson in the nature of pain.
“But forgive and excuse me, good monk. I must speak with Sir Geoffrey. That corpse is a man whom
my father long valued for his good service. I am owed an explanation of how Hywel came so soon to his mortal fate.”
“For cert,” Thomas replied, forcing his hands into the sleeves of his robe.
With a nod, Robert strode off toward the riders, his boots crunching loudly against the ice-encrusted ground and his hot breath whitening the air with a muttered oath.
Thomas started forward as well, then thought the better of it. He was, after all, a guest and a stranger at Wynethorpe Castle. If he were needed, he would be summoned.
As Robert drew near the party, Thomas saw a second horseman nod a greeting. This man was of middle years, Thomas noted, his beard gray and tinted with only a light remembrance of brown. Tanned even in winter, his lean and hawkish face was deeply lined. He waved the servant offering a hand aside with some grace, then shouted to Henry to come to him. As he bent forward, he hooked his elbow and forearm around the pommel of his saddle and swung awkwardly to the ground, landing slightly off balance. He righted himself with dignity. There was only empty space where his right hand should have been.
Henry approached with reluctance, his face quite flushed as he pointed to the corpse. “I had naught to do with that,” he yelled, directing his words to one of the two women in the party. Then glaring at Robert, he continued. “The man got in my way on the path. I slapped his steed to move him back and the beast threw him. Indeed, I might have been the one injured had I not done so! I cannot be blamed for the man’s incompetence with a horse.”
Robert pointedly ignored Henry. “Sir Geoffrey,” he said with a bow to the elder. The latter put his handless arm around the younger man’s shoulders, turned his back on the red-faced Henry, and gestured toward the corpse-carrying horse. As he did so, he bent to speak privately into Robert’s ear.
Thomas could not hear what was said, but Henry most certainly did. “You lie!” the Lavenham heir shouted, shifting from foot to foot in evident frustration. The young man’s shuffling reminded the monk of a little boy who needed to relieve himself. Anger over Henry’s treatment of the old servant returned, and Thomas tightly closed his eyes to keep his temper cool.
When he opened them, he turned his attention away from the Lavenham party and back to the sobbing woman. Her grief now burrowed deeply into his heart and, however inadequate his words might be, Thomas longed to offer some comfort. Before he could do so, he saw an old woman pushing through the crowd of clustered fellow servants. He watched as she reached down and picked the young woman up. With the gentleness of a mother with a hurt child, she folded the wailing woman into her arms, then began crooning words in a soft tongue Thomas assumed was Welsh. Silently, the crowd of servants parted and the old woman led the younger away.
Perhaps it was best, Thomas thought, that he, a stranger and an Englishman, stand aside. At such a time, the woman would surely want the comfort of a priest she knew.
“Brother Thomas!”
Robert was gesturing him forward. “Brother Thomas accompanied my sister, Sir Geoffrey. He is a priest in the Order of Fontevraud,” he explained to the man beside him.
The older man ran his eyes over Thomas with the quick assessment of a commander determining a soldier’s competence for a required task. “That man died unshriven, brother. We returned immediately, but I fear for his soul.”
“His soul may still be within hearing, my lord,” Thomas said. As he turned toward the dead man and his hovering spirit, he overheard Sir Geoffrey say to Henry: “If this man’s soul has fled, his woman will not be alone in praying that your soul will one day share his sufferings in Hell for your actions this day.”
Chapter Four
Baron Adam of Wynethorpe drank from his cup of steaming, mulled cider and stared into the dancing flames of the hearth. He was a tall man whose lean and muscular frame suggested he was too young to have three surviving children, all grown into their third decade of life; yet gray had begun to dull his fair hair and a battle injury had stamped his walk with a pronounced limp. Such were the limits of observable human frailty.
He was not known for weakness. Like most military men, he had little patience with inactivity, but the austerity with which he chose to ignore the pains of his old wounds exceeded that of almost all his fellows. He rode daily when he could and paced nervously when he could not. After he was no longer able to swing a sword in battle, he had turned to the games of the king’s court and played them with equally cold precision and unemotional practicality in the service of his liege lord. Indeed, many might have said that strength was a virtue he sometimes took to obstinate excess. Few could remember the last time the baron had laughed with abandon. No man could claim he had ever seen him weep.
Weaknesses he had, of course, albeit ones known best to God and to his own soul. Had those in his circle of acquaintance been asked what chinks the baron might have in his armor, some would have pointed to his code of honor, which he would not bend for solely personal gain. Others might have suggested it was his passionate loyalty to king, friends, and family. Had this been brought to his notice, he would have smiled and shaken his head. To him, his greatest vulnerability was love.
Since the death of his adored wife almost fifteen years ago, he had lost all tolerance for stabs to the heart. Physical pain from a sword or mace was naught compared to the pain of her loss or to the possibility of betrayal because of love. As a consequence, he guarded against expressing the emotion with the ferocity of Cerberus, the three-headed dog standing at the gates of Hell.
There were exceptions. His grandson knew he loved him. After all, a six-year-old boy could do little to hurt him, except die, and Adam had reacted quickly when the lad had sickened, demanding a healer whose reputation was rooted in fact, not rumor. On occasion, Adam had shown his boys how dear they were to him, for he was lucky in his sons. As children, Hugh and Robert had always been both obedient and loyal to their father. They had also grown into good men.
Eleanor was different. He had adored her above all his other children from the moment of her birth, but, since the death of his wife when Eleanor was six, he had been unable to look at the daughter without seeing his beloved Margaret. Whatever joy he felt when Eleanor stood beside him was instantly balanced by the ever-fresh pain of his wife’s death in childbirth. Thus the love he bore his daughter had become the one emotion he feared most, his greatest weakness, and the one he kept most carefully hidden. Especially from Eleanor.
***
“My lord father.”
Eleanor walked into the dining hall, accompanied by Sister Anne. As the baron bowed out of respect for her vocation and she curtsied in acknowledgment of his rank, she felt herself tremble. She still felt reduced to the status of a child in her father’s stern presence despite her taking office as the head of a sizable priory.
“How fares my grandson?” he asked, emotion roughening his voice.
“Well, my lord.” Eleanor gestured to the woman beside her. “Sister Anne has brought her fine skills to bear. Richard has passed the crisis.” Once again she folded her arms into the sleeves of her habit and grasped her arms to stop the shaking. Sister Beatrice, her aunt, had oft told her she was foolish to react so to her father, but his deep voice had always sounded so formidable to her young ears.
“As soon as I let him out of bed, Richard will play havoc with any calm here, my lord,” Anne added. “You might find greater peace fighting the Welsh.”
Eleanor watched her father smile, the relief painting his face with a glow she saw only when his grandson was the object. In truth, she felt no jealousy of her nephew. Still, her heart did ache on occasion when she saw her father smile at Richard, and she wondered if the memory of the baron looking on her in such a fashion in the years before her mother’s death was only a fancy born of longing.
After her aunt had taken Eleanor to Amesbury to raise, he had visited her, but she soon began to wonder why he bothered. Whenever she had run to him, arms open as had been her wont in a happier life, he would step back and greet her with formal s
everity, his dark eyebrows coming together like armies engaging in battle. Although he did hug her at the end of these short visits, the gesture was abrupt, and he would quickly depart, leaving only the scent of leather and horses in her empty arms.
The baron’s voice broke into her musings. “I am deeply in your debt, sister,” he was saying to Sister Anne. “Ask what you will, and I will give it to you if it is within my power to do so.”
These words brought back the one memory that Eleanor kept close to her heart for those times she most doubted her father’s love. It had been the winter after her mother’s death. She had been not much older than Richard, and, like her nephew, had had a dangerously high fever. She thought she was having a vision when she looked up and saw her father bend over her bed, then lift her up into a fierce hug, his cool tears falling in great drops on her fevered neck. Later, when she told her aunt of this thing, Sister Beatrice said it had been no fevered imagining at all. When he had gotten the news of her illness, she told her, the baron had ridden without a stop from Winchester to Amesbury in a torrential rain to be at his daughter’s bedside.
Why then, Eleanor had asked, did he never show her such love at other times? As her aunt took the thin little girl onto her lap, she had explained thus: “Because your mother took both your father’s heart and the babe she died of with her to the tomb. You look so much like your dead mother that he can never see the daughter without seeing the ghost of the wife.”
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