Within A Forest Dark

by Mary Ellen Johnson

  The lingering reverberations from the bells seemed to shatter the afternoon heat, rising in waves from the paving stones. As Margery slipped around to a back entrance, she wiped her face with her sleeve. Either the weather or the possibility of seeing Matthew again made breathing difficult.

  Quietly, she climbed the back stairs, as she had in the past. The moment had arrived. Seven years, a time in which they'd passed from children to adults. War, death, marriage, treachery, heartache, such emptiness, when she'd felt as trapped as Robin in his lovely cage, when her misery had spun before her in an endless spool...

  Feeling lightheaded, Margery held up her hand—she noted its trembling—and knocked on the solar door.

  Silence within. Perhaps there had been some mistake. She wiped her palms on her kirtle. Such a huge structure to be so unnaturally still, as if the household had all been wiped out by some disaster. Margery licked her lips. Dare she knock a second time?

  Movement in the solar, a stirring. Footsteps? Then the door opened and Matthew stood before her. It seemed as if they were both frozen, trapped as if in one of Westminster Abbey's frescoes. They gazed into each other's eyes but Margery could not have commanded her limbs to move or her mouth to speak, and was only capable of the most fleeting impressions—that Matthew's cotehardie was the color of Robin's breast, that his beard and hair had recently been trimmed, that behind him the windows were closed and the curtains drawn, lending a soothing coolness to the room. And that Matthew's expression, as he looked upon her, was unguarded, even tender.

  Overcome, Margery swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the tears that seemed stuck in her throat. How she had missed him, dreamed of him, yearned for him.

  In a lightning flash, she felt it all: the weight of her years with Crull, the gnawing in her stomach, as if it were being shredded to pieces by invisible claws whenever her husband was near; the instinctive recoil from his touch, the beatings, the miscarriage; the fruitless fantasies of plunging a dagger into his heart, of finding some spell that would cause him to die a painful death, a potion that would stop his heart, the perfect law, the perfect attorney, the perfect judges who would agree, "Aye, this marriage is annulled," and free her. Trying to pray away her misery and burying herself in the daily duties of wife and matron, repeating to herself and others that she was happy enough, or conversely, that her melancholia was penance for breaking God's commandments.

  Matthew reached out and caressed her cheek. She found herself in his arms.

  "Meg."

  He tipped her chin and brushed her mouth with his, as if that glancing connection would seal their relationship. His arms tightened around her and she molded herself to him. After a long time he kissed the crown of her head.

  "I have missed thee," he whispered.

  Tears stung her eyes. She feared if she responded she would start crying so she only nodded and pressed more tightly against him, burying her face against his chest.

  Matthew pulled her to the bed and they began undressing each other, slowly, as if they had all the time in the world, or if their reunion could erase the years.

  "Touch me here," he whispered. This is what I want. This is what I need to make me whole.

  "Touch me here," she whispered. This is what will resurrect me. This is what will bring me back from the dead.

  Afterward, as they lay, wrapped in each other's arms, Margery breathed in Matthew's scent, ran her fingers across the hardness of his abdomen, her foot along the curve of his muscular calves, and the feel of her husband came to her, causing her stomach to resume the churning that had become so familiar since her marriage.

  How did I ever survive?

  She could not speak of it, bring Simon Crull into the room with them and yet, as the shadows lengthened and their time came to an end, he was indeed present.

  "I cannot bear to be with him, ever again." She whispered.

  Matthew drew her closer. "I will talk to lawyers and clerks and clergy, to the Archbishop of Canterbury himself if I must. We will obtain an annulment, I will see to that." Matthew shifted her so that he could look into her eyes. "Now that Harry is married, it does not matter what I do. I will wed thee, if 'twould please you. I will not let you go this time."

  And so they spun their fantasies in the darkness of Hart's Place, feeling for that moment that they could indeed erase the past, that love was enough, and that nothing would ever part them again.

  Chapter 11

  London, Summer-Fall 1368

  As Dog Days descended upon London, the city became mired in a heat more sweltering than anyone could remember. Without a cleansing breeze, haze from chimney fires clung to rooftops and mingled with the stench of garbage and the sullen air creeping off the Thames. Margery had trouble sleeping, but not only because of the weather.

  Simon Crull was preoccupied with Charing Cross, which seemed to her a hulking pile, dark and foreboding, already falling into ruin. She believed her husband and that Albertus, that white-haired white-bearded creature she'd nicknamed the Warlock, were engaged in some sort of criminal activity. The men around the pair looked as if they'd just crawled from London's underworld, though Margery wasn't sure what the brigands might be up to—mayhap clipping, counterfeiting, or passing stolen goods. Whatever their evil deeds, she worried, once discovered they would destroy the Shop.

  Nicholas Norlong, so concerned about business, so proprietary about the Shop, also expressed concern, in his hesitant oblique way.

  "I hear rumors, Dame Margery, about an illegal smelting operation," he said, his bobbing Adam's apple accentuating his nervousness. "I am told thieves purchase stolen silver vessels, melt them down and turn them into plate which they then sell to merchants travelling overseas. I am not saying that is what happening, please do not misunderstand me." Norlong kneaded his hands. "'Tis just that the Master has lost all interest in business and some of the men I've seen going in and out of Charing Cross look like cutthroats and thieves. Not that I am checking up on the Master or following him. I just happened to pass by once..."

  Margery thanked him and, in her husband's absence, made certain that Norlong became the de facto Master Craftsman, overseeing every aspect of the goldsmithing business. Judging from the number and quality of customers patronizing the Shop, her husband's bizarre behavior was not yet a problem. But still she feared a scandal. What if Crull WAS engaged in criminality? What if arrests were made? Could the Shop be closed or ordered out of business? Had her husband taken leave of his senses?

  Occasionally, when rendezvousing with Matthew, Margery suspected she was being followed by one of Crull's henchmen. Once she was sure she glimpsed Udo Stryere, a glowering hulk with the mien of an assassin—or at least her imagining of an assassin—among a group of loiterers. But when Simon deigned to attend to business or interact with her, he seemed no more critical or suspicious than normal. More distracted, mayhap, but that must have to do with the other world he had created, the world beyond the Shop. Margery assured herself she and Matthew were being suitably discreet.

  Each time the lovers met, Margery's passion burned more hotly, and each time upon leaving she wondered, How can this be so? It was beyond reason, as if, after surviving a desert her thirst could never be slaked.

  After making love, they would spent the rest of their stolen time conversing, as they might compress the happenings of years into a handful of afternoons. Matthew spoke of the aftermath of the Battle of Poitiers and his disappointment when, because of an oath to his brother, he'd declined being knighted on the battlefield. He spoke of other campaigns and of his concerns for Prince Edward's health. He spoke of his sister Elizabeth and her brood of boys—at least until Margery told him the truth of her mother's murder at the hands of Elizabeth's husband, Lawrence Ravenne. After that, Matthew confined talk of family to his parents and his brother. He sketched lovely descriptions of Cumbria and spoke of the circumstances surrounding Harry's wedding, even of the night when he had broken his oath to his brother.

  What Matthew
never mentioned was Desire's accusation that he was the father of her child.

  Margery reminisced about their first meeting, when she'd scarce been nine-years-old, when she and Thurold had been hiding in the fens following Alice's murder and Matt had called, "Come out, little one. I'll not hurt you." She spoke of the time following the Death when she'd sought help from her natural father, and how Thomas Rendell had dismissed her with a bag of coins, coins she'd ultimately refused. She spoke of her ambivalence about her heritage, of being caught between two worlds, noble and commoner. She spoke of her love for John Ball and Thurold and her gratitude for Matthew's part in freeing her stepbrother. She spoke of her robin and Orabel and of a hundred and one mundane things that happened at the Shop.

  What she never spoke of was her marriage to Simon Crull.

  While Matthew pressed, she always deflected him, fearing what he would do if he found out about the miscarriage. Nor would she discuss the beatings or elaborate upon her trips to consistory court beyond saying she was proud of herself for learning to read and write. She did not comment when Matthew detailed his progress finding the proper clerics, the most straightforward pathway to her freedom. She did not want Simon Crull to intrude upon their time together in any form. She would rather pretend her husband did not exist.

  Nor did Margery press Matthew to reminisce about Bordeaux, and inwardly cringed when he began a sentence with "In Bordeaux, it was...", "In Bordeaux, we did..."

  Margery could not tell her lover that she was haunted by her imaginings of that world and all it represented. In her mind's eye she pictured echoing marble palaces populated by ever more provocative versions of Desiderata Cecy, eager to initiate naïve English knights into the arts of love, and delicate courtiers who sang and danced and lounged around all the day drinking claret and penning love sonnets. She conjured topaz waters skimmed by brilliantly painted and appointed ships. She could almost feel the hot winds blowing into Aquitaine's dazzling capital and then beyond, to endless vineyards weighted with grapes the size of fists.

  Most of all, Margery was haunted by Matthew's former leman. When Matt caressed her or pleased her in an unusual way—and there were many unusual ways—she envisioned Desiderata's Cecy's slanted eyes upon them, observing them with her cat smile, felt as if they three shared the Hart solar.

  While she tried her best, Margery could not ignore the fact that, during their separation, certain things about Matthew had... changed. Was it because she was so used to Simon's fumblings that her lover seemed even more adept by comparison? Or was it simply that she and Matthew had been young when first they'd known each other as man and woman? But age alone could not explain his lovemaking prowess, his ability to pleasure her beyond reason.

  'Tis because I love him, she rationalized. He need but touch her or to look at her a certain way and her desire, her reactions knew no bounds. Which, she assured herself, has more to do with my emotions than his skills.

  Still she found herself biting back questions that threatened to shatter their happiness that might cause him to label her a nag, a harridan, to dismiss her as tiresome and not worth his time. Though the words never reached her lips, they were ever-present in her mind.

  "Where did you learn this? That? Did SHE teach you?"

  "Lying in your bed together"—the hedonistically gilded, pillowed and perfumed bed of her imagination—"did you compare me to her? Did you share tales of my inexperience and ridicule me?"

  "Were her bedroom talents the reason you stayed with her?"

  "How do I compare to her?"

  "Did you speak to her of love?"

  "Did you whisper the very same words that you do to me?"

  All that and more Margery wanted to ask, but she dared not. Instead, she soothed herself with the knowledge that Desiderata Cecy and her husband were in Gascony following the birth of their first child, and out of Matthew and Margery's lives.

  At least for the time being.

  * * *

  As summer drifted into fall, Margery grew increasingly complacent about her and Matthew's liaisons. Simon Crull was around so seldom she could almost see Matthew at her leisure, and unless he spoke of political matters or she heard talk at the Shop, it was easy to ignore outside events. Thus, she was taken by surprise one early September afternoon when Matthew spoke of war.

  They were lounging in a flowery mead located in the most isolated part of the Hart garden. The day's heat, the droning of insects and the aftermath of lovemaking had all conspired to make Margery drowsy, forgoing conversation in order to rest her head in the lap of her beloved.

  "Charles V is a woman," Matthew said, while pouring them wine retrieved from a gold tray loaded with fruit, cheeses, and pasties. "His father was a proper knight and always behaved chivalrously, even at Poitiers. Unlike Jean, however, Charles prefers deviousness and unmanly intrigue to the sword."

  Margery's lassitude vanished in an instant. How foolish she had been, pretending that the world did not extend beyond these splashing fountains, the larks and nightingales singing in their cages, the gardener whistling while cleaning a fish pond just beyond their sight. Margery need not gaze into a bowl of water or cast a horoscope to predict where disagreements between England and France always ended. War. Again and again. Now and forever. Here, in their lushly carpeted sanctuary she had mistakenly believed they might somehow keep the hounds of hell at bay.

  Margery sat up to face her lover. Matthew was looking off into the distance while absently flexing his fingers around the stem of his goblet.

  "'Tis a curious thing. When we seek to engage the French, they dissolve like the mist." He replaced his goblet on the gold tray. "Yet somehow, lands are daily being returned to them. I do not understand how we can win all our battles and yet still be losing ground." Retrieving a venison pasty, he broke off a length of crust and after she declined it, popped the piece into his mouth. "Bordeaux is now in open rebellion against our prince. I canna wait until King Edward sends word to summon his troops. Once we're across the channel we will crush those pesky Gascons with their blatherings about taxes, and force Charles to fight and 'twill be as grand a campaign as any in the past."

  Margery pushed down that familiar sense of hopelessness whenever reality shook free of its leash. As if war could ever be grand.

  "I hate the very thought of your leaving." What would Thurold and John Ball think if they saw her so calmly discussing such matters with one who dealt in death? Surely, they would accuse her of being a traitor to her class. At least half of it.

  She inhaled deeply of the suddenly cloying scents of the roses, grapes and roses blanketing the bower's arbors and trellises, "Sometimes," she mused, "I wonder what it might be like for the French." Occasionally Thurold spoke of the enemy in a sympathetic manner, at least the paysans, though he'd also dispatched them easily enough. "What would we feel if 'twas English soil that was so bloodied?"

  Matthew shrugged. "'Tis an ugly country with barren rolling hills and a miserable climate. We could set the entire country ablaze and no one could tell the difference. Nor are their people like us. The women are homely and flat chested, and the men affect feminine airs and are more interested in food and fashion than war. They deserve to lose."

  That description certainly did not match Lady Cecy or the Bordelais who purchased jewelry and reliquaries at the Shop. Margery wrapped her arms around her bent knees and rested her head upon them. Shadows from an oak's branches dappled the surrounding daisies, periwinkles and pennyroyals so artfully cultivated that they seemed to have just naturally sprung from the earth. Yet another illusion...

  She sighed. How callous her lover could be, or was that simply the way with all men? Nay, all humans, herself included? Perhaps this moment she was sensitive to another campaign, but was that only because she would be affected? How many times did she ignore the violence and suffering that took place in London's shadowy alleyways or even out in the open? Simply turn her head or scurry past or later send Master Walter the Steward or another me
mber of the household to provide succor while she held herself safely at a distance?

  As if sensing her disapproval, Matthew said, "No woman can ever understand the way it is with a man." He gazed at dragonflies flitting among brilliant splotches of yellow, white and red, and saw instead chevauchees during which he'd run down fleeing women and their children. But they had been French mothers who, if left alone, would have bred sons who grew up to kill Englishmen. It was a knight's duty to do whatever was necessary to protect England.

  "We are trained to fight, and in order to do our jobs properly people must be killed. Even the church teaches that if the motivation is proper, war cannot be wrong. I swear by all that's holy I have never set out to battle with the idea of slaughtering innocents or enriching myself with pillage. All true knights war only for the love of right."

  Matthew wondered suddenly whether he sounded pompous as a bishop. And what he asserted was demonstrably false. Some mercenaries would champion Satan if paid enough. He'd seen much of that following Najera, when the White Company had ravaged Castilian countrysides, putting booty before God and lord.

  Seeking to end the conversation, Margery said, "Perhaps you will not be called to go," and kissed his calloused palm. "Perhaps His Grace will make peace. Events have such a way of changing, do they not?"

  "Aye." Matthew reached out to caress her hair and then traced her lips with his finger. "Who knows the way it is with kings and kingdoms?"

  Chapter 12

  London, Early 1369

  On January 1, the Feast of Fools was celebrated at Windsor Castle, throughout England, at Prince Edward's court in Bordeaux, and across much of Europe. During the Feast, society's established order was upended. A Lord of Misrule was crowned who would openly criticize his betters and command them to do all manner of shocking things. Servants might mock their masters and order them about. Drinking, crossdressing, the singing of bawdy songs and even gambling upon church altars was commonplace. What was not celebrated on January 1, however, was New Year's. That was reserved for March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation. But whenever 1369 officially arrived, Matthew Hart once more had the unsettling feeling that in this year of God's Grace his world was askew. As if he were attempting to walk a straight course while afflicted with a head muddled by wine.