And imagining so much more.
* * *
Chapter 7
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Eleanor had dreamed through the night of a prowling, red-eyed gargoyle and awakened before dawn, thoroughly rested and eager to organize the day well ahead of her steward's prejudgments.
That would remain her creed in her dealings with him: to take firm control of the reins and never—
Dear God, I kissed him! Out of habit, because she kissed all sorts of people, regularly. Pippa and Lisabet and Dickon, the abbess, Father Clyde and … well, everyone whom she cared for, respected.
Nicholas's carving had charmed her completely. He had charmed her. She'd meant only a simple kiss of appreciation, but she'd ignited flames and yearnings instead. She'd lingered like a thief, tasted the surprising black softness of his beard. His scent of bay and woodsmoke swept round her still.
But these were hardly the kind of thoughts she needed with a castle waiting to be rebuilt.
She shook Dickon awake at the portico door. Rubbing his eyes and yawning, he got to his feet.
"Dickon, what do you know of horses?"
"I've stolen more'n my share." She loved the bumptious slant of his grin, mostly because he wore it too rarely. And too quickly his face flamed beneath all those freckles, and wariness filled his eyes. "But I've given up stealing, ya know."
"I would never ever ask you to go raiding for me. But since we now have a horse, would you know one end of it well enough from the other to feed and saddle and shoe Figgey?"
That smile came again and stayed. "My lady, I know horses well enough to do all you ask, on a moonless night, at a dead gallop, with a legion of Edward's English bowmen on my arse. Why do you ask?"
She couldn't help her own smile. "I'd rather the king's men never again have reason to follow you so closely, Dickon. And I doubt Figgey could raise a trot, let alone a gallop. I'm asking because I want you to be the constable of Faulkhurst."
"Me, my lady?" His face grew unaccountably surly. "Why the bloody hell would you do a thing like that to me?"
"A thing like what?"
"To tempt me to sinning." He crossed his arms and ankles and leaned stubbornly against the arch jamb. "I am a highwayman, ya know."
"Were a highwayman."
"Aye. Were one—but sometimes I still get the itch to—" He shoved his fingers into his belt as though to trap them away from temptation.
"To jump out of the hedge and rob a passing merchant of everything, right down to his garters?"
Dickon's mouth hung open for a long moment, and then he nodded fiercely. "Exactly right, milady."
"And does this itch pass you by an instant later?"
"God be praised, it does."
"Then, love, it's only the prickly remains of a bad habit. The feeling will fade completely one day—like mine has for sugared ginger." A tiny falsehood, but only to gain the point that he had will enough to decide rightly and to get on with his future. "You will be the very best constable."
He still looked stunned and afraid and unreasonably angry, with his sturdy arms fused to his chest. "What would a constable have to be doing?"
And there it was: opportunity. In its most divine splendor, offered to those who needed only to reach out and take it.
Just as she had offered throughout the towns and villages on her way to Faulkhurst. A rumor of opportunity whispered into a hungry ear. To an apprentice cobbler, a beleaguered smith, or a reformed highwayman.
Or a stubborn steward too, with a little coaxing.
"You'll mind the gatehouse and the stables, take inventory of the armory, round up the carts and wagons that are scattered all over the bailey, make ready for—"
He snorted. "For your garrison of ghosts and gargoyles."
"Aye, Dickon!" Eleanor rounded roughly on the boy, her patience scattered, that ever-present fear whispering harshly of her folly, her conceit. "We'll make ready for whoever will fight on our side. For anyone with hope enough to start again. You'll stand with me, won't you, Dickon? I need you."
His clear eyes reddened and watered, but he steadied his chin. "You know that I will follow you into hell, my lady."
That made her smile and warmed her bones, made her take his hand, and say quietly, "We've already been there, Dickon, and stayed far too long. Now I'm ready for an ordinary view of earth. What about you?"
He made a broad swipe across his eyes with his ragged sleeve and snuffled back a sob. "Ah, yes, my lady."
Tears filled Eleanor's eyes as her freckled champion went down on one knee in front of her.
"Your staff of office, Master Dickon." An old ladle was the only thing near enough at hand for an instant naming. "And my abiding love."
Blushing far up into his hairline, as he always did at the slightest kindness, Dickon took the honor and the ladle with a gigantic smile and an all-the-way-to-the-ground bow.
"Did you just dub Dickon a knight, my lady?" Lisabet and Pippa had been watching in rapt silence from their pallets in front of the hearth, and now surrounded their new constable, Pippa holding fast to his neck, Lisabet absently twirling a hank of his hair.
"If I were queen, Lisabet, I'd grant Dickon a dozen knighthoods for his bravery. For now he'll have to settle for constable here at Faulkhurst."
"It'll do, my lady." Dickon stood amongst his fondly clinging admirers, squared his shoulders, and offered one of his engaging grins. "For now."
* * *
She found Hannah in the kitchen, powdered to the elbows in flour and bread dough and looking happily frazzled, her grey hair caught up in a cap that was missing a tie on the right side.
"I've only enough for three more loaves after these two, my lady. After that—"
"You'll be baking in the kitchen with Faulkhurst grain tonight, Hannah. And tomorrow, in the bakehouse. I will find my husband's larder, store of grains, and winter fruit supply if I have to break down every door in the castle with my bare hands."
Meanwhile, Nicholas would start on the bakehouse.
She spent the next hour before breakfast forcing William's stubborn locks: picking some cleanly, whacking others when they wouldn't budge.
"Fie and damn you, Bayard, to a hell filled with insatiable lice and poxy harlots."
She cursed her way down the passages and up the tower steps, adding to the growing map in her head of a castle rich with possibilities and risk, retreating only when a corridor was blocked by a dangerous stone fall.
Her husband's obstacles stood guard over all manner of rooms, from vaulted chambers to dank undercrofts to small metal coffers. But each finally gave up its secret cache to her, opening to a startling discovery of one kind or another, from echoingly empty to absolutely captivating.
"How do you fare down here, my lady?" Hannah found her just as she broke into a well-stocked spinning room.
"It's like finding treasure, isn't it, Hannah?"
"Oh, yes, my lady."
They ogled and speculated as though they had been let loose at a mile-long market faire, with a bottomless purse and all the time in the world. Restraint was difficult, but Eleanor's plan was to open every door and save the exploration and cataloging for later in the week.
Food stores were the most critical, and she offered a grateful prayer when she finally found the larder: long and low, cluttered to its square, squat vaultings with a mottled mix of furniture and chests, barrels and casks, and odd things hanging from the ceiling.
"Dried peas, my lady," Hannah called.
"And persimmons, Hannah! And walnuts, combs of honey, chests of barley and wheat-berries." And crossbeams hung thickly with smoked fish and beef, and shelves of green-rimed cheeses. "And a spice chest for you, Hannah." A flurry of exotic scents wreathed the tall cabinet, even before Eleanor had its door unlocked and one of its small drawers pulled out to show the woman.
"I've never seen such a thing." Hannah stuck her nose into the drawer and sniffed so hard she came up sneezing fiercely, nearly dislodging the new bright gree
n-linen cap Eleanor had found for her in a small wardrobe. "What is … is … it?" Another, bigger sneeze made Eleanor laugh.
She sniffed the airy yellow powder lightly and sighed in pure pleasure, then recited from memory, "Roasted capon stuffed with bread crumbs and ground almonds and currants and spiced with saffron."
"This is saffron, is it? Oh, my aching bunions." The woman looked horrified and clutched the drawer to her thin bosom. "God's dusted gold, and I just sneezed a handful of it all over my apron."
"It's all right, Hannah."
"Saffron's so dear that I never smelled it before, or tasted it." She replaced the drawer with a trembling hand and pulled out another, sniffed at it, and shook her head. "And this, my lady? It's got the sharp pinch of ginger to it."
"Zedoary. I know the scents and tastes well, Hannah, but I haven't the least idea what to do with them in the kitchen."
"Though I'm a baker by trade, my lady, I'd like to offer my hand at the kettle, too." Hannah smiled hesitantly.
"Then a cook you will be."
They stacked three boxes of kitchen things and carried them up the stairs and into the pantry. "If you don't mind me asking, my lady, what happened to your husband? Was he taken in the pestilence?"
Aye, taken straight to hell by the devil himself. Or so she had imagined the scene—with a great deal of cursing and cowering and gnashing of teeth. "Aye, he was, Hannah."
Hannah clicked her tongue in unwarranted sympathy. Don't waste your prayers on him, Hannah. Please.
"I am sorry for your loss, my dear." Hannah rubbed Eleanor's back in just the right place to make her sigh and detest her husband that much more. "Such a ferociously wicked time, it was."
"Aye." William Bayard hadn't been the cause, but he'd surely been a symptom, his phantom shape always at the head of her nightmares—the fifth Horseman, a demon of his own making, always chasing her.
"My Fergus and I … we lost every one of our children, milady. The grandchildren, too."
Eleanor's heart collapsed. Tears crowded her throat, brimmed her eyes, and fell swiftly. "Oh, Hannah, no. How awful."
"A dozen they had been, my babies. All grown-up and healthy to a fault, every one of them. Then all of them lost in the course of ten days. Such horrible anguish they suffered, one after the other. And me not being able to do a blessed thing to help, don't you know?"
"I do know, Hannah." So well, so deeply, that I'm too much a coward to let myself remember too thoroughly.
So she dodged the horrifying memories again—of a malady so accursed and anguishing it had sent good fathers and mothers running from their dying children, priests from their flocks, the starving into the homes of the dead with the dogs.
Sent her into the places of the dying, where she did her best to give comfort and peace, yet failed so often.
Save me, my lady. But of course, she couldn't. No one could.
And so she shoved aside these horrifying, paralyzing memories and all the others that pursued her when she wasn't planning or writing or humming—exchanged them for better, safer ones. She slipped into Hannah's sagging arms and held tightly to her as they clung and rocked each other in the kitchen pantry.
"As unrighteous as it seems, my lady, I prayed that God would take them quick."
"As I did, too." Hundreds of times. "There's no divine penance to be found in that kind of torment." There couldn't be.
"They're all with God now, don't you think? Together and feasting on candied ginger, like they never had in this world." Hannah laughed sharply and fanned at her reddened eyes. "And me, my lady, as old and useless as I am, was left behind instead of my little Timothy. For what reason, I don't suppose I'll ever know."
Eleanor could hardly see the woman through her streaming tears as she held her away. "I know the reason, Hannah."
"Do you?"
"Aye. You stayed behind to rescue me."
Hannah chuckled and waved away the notion. "Oh, ho. Me, my lady? Rescue you, after all you've done for us? Nonsense."
"I need you sorely, Hannah. And Pippa does, too. And Dickon and Lisabet." And a particularly prickly steward. "Your children were well loved, and like it or not, you have a new brood to care for, and we do love you already."
"And I love you, dear girl. Right from the start." Hannah's smile was watery as she opened a drawer of peppercorns and sighed with joy. "You must miss him greatly, milady."
A question from nowhere at all. "Who is that?" Eleanor snuffled back her tears and dropped to her knees in front of another trunk, fishing around with her iron pick inside the interior of the flat-faced lock, feeling for the catch that would spring the hasp on the sugar safe.
"Your husband, my lady. Do you miss him?"
"Do I—" She stopped, only because she might have laughed heartily, and that would have sounded bitter and selfish.
"I've known you only these few hours, but you seem the kind of woman who loves fiercely and forever."
She missed William Bayard like she would miss a boil on her backside. But Hannah had suffered unfathomable loss, a dear family that she must ache for with every breath. She deserved a softer truth. "To be honest, Hannah, by an odd twist of fate, I never actually met my husband."
"What? How does that happen?" The woman sat down on a cask, brushed her palms together, and sniffed at them. "Was he an old man and didn't quite make it up the church steps to take you?"
"No. He was thirty and a bit, or so I was told. And able enough to climb any church steps he came across in his pillaging—to sack the sanctuary and the altar beyond. I doubt the man ever heard a full mass in his life, marriage or otherwise."
"Dearie me. A scoundrel?" Hannah looked too stunned for Eleanor to go into the gruesome details of her husband's blighted career as Edward's Holy Terror.
"A soldier. William Bayard and I were married by a proxy arranged by my father. After which the pestilence came, and then the next thing I heard about my husband was that he had died. In Calais, I believe."
"You don't know for sure."
"I know of a certainty that he's dead. But I can't really say that I miss him when I never set eyes on the man, or communicated with him in any way." A fact that rankled more with every cloud of dust she stirred.
Hannah was as persistent as she was insightful. "So you and your husband never shared a marriage bed?"
"No, we didn't." All the heavens be praised. Then a jangling unease rolled across her shoulders, and became a nagging fear that settled like a snake in her stomach.
A marriage unconsummated wasn't quite complete in the eyes of the church or in the common laws of the country. So if she'd never been completely married to Bayard, how the devil could she still be his widow?
And if she wasn't his legal widow, then her claim to Faulkhurst was—
Invalid? No. It couldn't be.
Oh, bloody, bleeding hell, to quote her steward.
* * *
Chapter 8
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Every muscle in Nicholas's body ached as he crossed the sun-drenched bailey toward the keep. He was too old to be sleeping in chairs—though he welcomed the chance to practice. A monk's cell couldn't be any less sterile or uncomfortable. Not that a pallet on the gatehouse floor or even a plush feather bed and all the silken trimmings would have left him any better off, or in a less abused mood. Against all of his convictions, and twenty years of expertly overrunning ill-fortified castles, he had dutifully opened the bloody gate wide, had checked on Figgey—his wife's new plowing marvel—and had steeled himself to face her willful crusade with one of his own. One whose sole intent was to repair her castle, his castle, and then be gone to the monastery and to solitude—as swiftly and as distantly as possible.
Distant seemed more possible in the broad light of day. She'd hardly left him alone all night, had ambushed him round every corner of his dreaming, feeding him ripe plums and warm-skinned peaches, beckoning him, kissing him again and fully, breaking his will a hundred times. A stunning temptation that had roused
him near dawn to a brisk walk on the ramparts.
Aye, today would begin their separation, and his solitary walk toward his monastic calling.
He was already practicing chastity with a vengeance. He was serving the less fortunate well enough with her wayfarers, and as for poverty, he hadn't a coin to his name.
Not so impossible, after all.
He climbed the portico steps and entered the great hall, expecting to find it chaotic, stuffed with the child's rambunctious squealing and the lad's blustering. But the hall was empty of people, and as still as a crypt. A strong, familiar silence slipped lead through his veins and slowed his breathing, thickening the cool air with weighty memories.
Of clouds of thyme and juniper collecting in the timbered ceiling, of pungent, medicinal smoke billowing from dozens of braziers round the clock, stationed like hellish sentries between the cots and the pallets, between the dying and the newly fallen.
He'd called on every resource that he could buy or beg or build, anything that would ward off the terror that seemed to slip over the ramparts on the wind: first, vinegar and rose water to wash the floors and the walls. Then, unshuttered windows to let in the unaffected air. Then sealed windows to forestall the invading miasma. He'd prayed on his bare knees, he'd sopped brows, dug and filled grave after grave, had blackened the daylight with burning linens from the pallets of the dead.
He had offered up every prevention prescribed by the priests and the scholars and the doctors—everything but flight from the carnage or seclusion. This battle had to be played out in the open and to the death—between himself and his God.
He'd had little time to learn their names, had come too late to know their dreams, and they had all been too close to death to understand his gratitude for tending his crops and filling his coffers through the years, while he'd been out cutting his way through other villages, sieging and sacking other castles, spending other lives.
And just when he had begun to believe that he'd served his penance, when he'd had nothing left but the son that he'd come to love so late, he discovered the true price of sin.
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