I could not help it. I blushed from such sudden intimacy, and lowered my eyes. “We are only friends, Thomas. I can offer little.” Rolling my shoulder along the post, I stepped lightly away, running my hand over the stubbled nose of his horse. The stallion’s lips nuzzled my palm, but found only dirt and sweat. “All I have is advice. And the only advice I have for you is to do as your father wishes.”
Stunned, Thomas stood in the mud, his palms open and fingers outstretched. “Isabella!”
I whirled on him then. How dare he come riding here in his indignation wrapped in that velvet cloak of nobility! How dare he announce what I always knew would be. “Why do you continue to deceive yourself? You are a fool!”
Thomas rushed forward, his hands ready to capture, but I turned to escape. His brows converged, brooding. “So you want me to marry her. Is that it?”
These were all the wrong protests, and I would have had him say a script full of any other courtly avowals.
But snatching a glimpse at my dusty wooden shoes and frayed gown, I knew I would not hear such.
Thomas’ fingers closed unexpectedly on my arm, yanking me toward him. “Tell me, Mistress Launder! Do you tire of me? And after I gave you my friendship all these years!”
“Have I not given you mine?”
Searching my face, he surrendered and released me. With curled fingers, he raked his glistening hair. Then, pegging his fists into his hips, he stared deeply into the countryside. The sky directly above had changed again. The deep summer blue was painted now with transparent brushstrokes of white. He seemed to be contemplating it, deciding. Was it only now he realized the world did not spin on the pin he held? Poor Thomas. Perhaps to be too wealthy was as burdensome as being too poor.
“You must have known this day would come,” I said aloud.
He dropped his head. The back of his neck was red from the sun. No doubt, he had ridden all the way from Caverswall. “I…I only…” When he swiveled toward me, his face wore all the passion of a child being disciplined. “I thought I could marry for love. We are rich enough…Oh, Isabella! Be my friend in this. If it were not for you and our long friendship…”
My face tightened. “How could I stand against your father’s decision? Who am I, after all?” I shook my head at the enormity of it. “Friends! This friendship of ours. It could be misinterpreted… by someone.”
“Isabella,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “It is not as if we are lovers. You are, and have ever been, like a sister to me. Surely all know that! There are many other women in this shire for lovers. Friends are harder come by.”
“Shame on you for those thoughts, Thomas!” I cried, too loudly. “Lovers! A betrothal is a promise made before God. Would you break a promise made to God?”
He scowled. “You do not understand at all, do you, with your quaint ways and rustic traditions?”
I did not much like his tone and opened my mouth to object when he interrupted. “The Giffards go back to William the Conqueror. We marry who is profitable. We do not have to love them…but we do have to love.”
“And the idea of fidelity is rustic to your mind? I pity you, Thomas. Oh not because of some marriage contract which is suitable for your position and even your temperament—though you are unwilling to recognize it. But because you have all the advantages of a name and a heritage and they mean nothing to you.”
“But I would share these things with you, Isabella,” he said with his Giffard’s petulance. “You have been more to me than any wife could be.”
“You could never share them with me. I know my place. These things are for your betrothed. I would never take them.”
“Then you would be a fool!”
His face—so often cheerful and charming—took on an unpleasant demeanor.
“Then I am a fool,” I admitted softly. “A practical fool.” Suddenly all our days together fell away. He was Thomas Giffard the nobleman, and I…and I…only Isabella Launder.
I did not want his anger just now. Perhaps he used it as a shield. I knew not. But there was little left to say. Turning away from his indignant scowl I trudged back toward the house when I spied the broken rose bush nearest the wall. His horse stood on them still. The sight of it assailed me so sharply that I was unprepared for the onrush of emotion welling up. I fell to my knees, cradling the small round blooms in my hands. “My roses!” I sputtered. “You broke my roses!”
Without hesitation he moved to the horse and mounted, thrusting his feet angrily into the stirrups. “You care more for those damn roses than for me.”
“But you have trampled them! Your recklessness—”
“Roses are hearty things,” he said gruffly. “It may yet survive.”
“But not when so brutally trampled!” I lifted the snapped stems, caring little that the thorns pierced my flesh.
“And our friendship, lady. Have you not trampled upon it?”
Rising straight like a rod, I turned to him, fingers curled into tight fists. “Why did you come, Thomas? You leave as you came, it seems, with nothing. You offered nothing, you asked nothing, and you received nothing!”
“So you have said it, lady. I leave with nothing.”
He wheeled the horse, gave me one last scathing glare, and rode out of the yard, the stallion’s hooves casting up great clods of mud.
THOMAS GIFFARD
SUMMER, 1515
Caverswall Castle, north of Beech
II
“Live now, believe me, wait not till tomorrow:
gather the roses of life today.”
–Pierre de Ronsard, 1524-1584
I was abominably angry. How could she ever completely understand my turmoil or my hurt? How could she deny me? Isabella was like a true sister, truer than my own siblings. A stone foundation to my clay monument. No. Not foundation. A statue of her own. Like a stone saint, she was perpetually in waiting until the moment of my return.
I thought of her even while I lay in the straw, nestled beside one of Father’s serving wenches. Yes, Isabella was very like a saintly statue, serious, unyielding, patient, unlike the fawning creature who lay beside me.
My hand lifted to stroke a silken thigh that had escaped the straw. She purred a throaty giggle. “My lord,” she murmured.
“Would you sleep during your working hours? Up, you slothful wretch!” and I playfully slapped her haunch. She yelped and sat upright, but her eyes were still hooded, hair falling indulgently across her face. She was a fetching lass, to be sure, and I could not help but smile at her. “Bessie,” I said, snaring my arms about her.
“Betty, my lord!”
“Yes. Betty. What shall I do without you when I am far from here?”
“You’re to be wed, my lord. When?”
“Too soon, my merry Betty. Too soon. Will you miss me?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Liar.” I slapped her thigh again and this time it roused her to her feet. She gathered her clothing and began to dress, scattering straw as each layer covered her. I leaned back and crossed one ankle over the other and watched. “Any number of young men will fill your hours and you will not think of me.”
“Any more than you will think of me, my lord.”
“Ha!”
“It’s that other then, you think of. Or is that your betrothed?”
“Who?”
She pushed back the hay-speckled hair from her face and insolently raised her chin at me. She smiled sleepily. “Isabella. It is a name you murmured to me.”
“I? How so? You jest with me.”
“Maybe so, my lord.” She yawned before throwing her veil lazily over her shoulder and sashaying out the door into the sunlight.
Shaking my head, I secured my slops and pulled on my jerkin and gown. Faith! That I should be so occupied by thoughts of Isabella that I mumble her name into a kitchen wench’s ear! How Mistress Launder’s cheek would blush at that.
Leaving the stables, I peered into the hazy afternoon, thinking of Isabella’
s commonplace features and how unlike she was even to our Bessie, whose face rounded with rosy sensuality, yet they were not unlike in their stations. How incredible the difference with which I viewed them both.
I could have easily forgotten about Isabella after that very first meeting, so long ago now. Recalling it always filled me with a portion each of amusement and embarrassment. I was a young rascal then, and she a hard-featured and spindly maid. That day—so many summers past now—I rode my stallion over the roads and byways with reckless impetuosity. The concerns of Caverswall were left far behind, and Father with his nattering about my schooling could be damned! Eyes shut tight, I had absorbed the bright sun dappling its warmth upon my closed lids. There was a fleeting rich scent of primrose shimmered on the wind, along with meadow grass, sweet and moist and filled with the essence of earth. That day I was the earth and sky.
Too late I spied her. The horse leaned, and when I opened my eyes to observe the bend in the road, I could do little then but haul upon the reins. Even so, I saw her go down at the edge of my sight. Wheeling the horse, my heart was in my throat. Jesu! Did I kill her? I was hours from Caverswall and help. Panicked, I wrenched the horse to a stop.
To my immense relief, she rose from the mire of the ditch and glared at me.
“Could you not see me?” I cried. “What were you doing in the middle of the road? God’s teeth!”
“That is hardly the point,” she replied, shaking each foot like a hound shaking his paws. She rather resembled a hound, with her thin arms, big hands, and long, unattractive face. Even covered in mud I could tell she was probably not much older than myself. Perhaps fifteen or sixteen, for the buds of her bosom were evident from the damp of her mud-spattered chemise and bodice. Having only just reached my thirteenth year, such things as bodices began to intrigue me. “Well, then,” I muttered indignantly, for indeed, what could I have said? Reaching into a pouch at my belt I tossed a coin that landed with a gentle thud at her feet.
The impudent creature stared at the disk a long moment before glaring at me. “What is this?”
“For your trouble,” I said, and thought that was that. I had only tilted some urchin into a ditch and no harm was done, except to that of my good humor. That was ruined. It forced me to consider how Father would have needed to save my neck if…but no matter. The creature was alive and well and now a groat richer.
“Do you think you can buy your way out of your troubles?” she said, stepping before me again. Like some fishwife she shook a scolding finger at me. “You sir, are a poor young man indeed.”
“I am no one’s ‘poor young man’! I am Thomas Giffard, son of Sir John Giffard.” I rose in the saddle, lengthened by my own nobility. “And I will thank you to treat your betters with more respect.”
“Forgive me, my lord,” she said without one shred of regard, “but I expect my betters not to hurl me into the mud, nor insult me with coin as if I were a beggar. I am Isabella Launder and my father is Yeoman Rafe Launder, owner of this grange near which you ride so heedlessly. And I would thank you to offer the proper civility to the king’s subjects who must travel this road. You may take your coin back, sir. I have no use for it.”
Tightening my gloved hand on the reins, I stared astonished at the coin still sitting in the mud and then at her lank frame. I should have lashed back. She looked as if she expected it, braced for it. But the amazing circumstance of her refusal aroused in me an unexpected awe, the same often aroused in me when I witnessed my father in poised confrontation with a room full of nobles. “I…I did not mean anything…”
“I know,” she offered, softening. With more grace than her loose limbs could be credited, she stooped to retrieve the coin and placed it into my outstretched hand.
“You are an unusual maid,” I said frowning. But I could not sustain that frown under her onslaught. I smiled.
My confidence faltered her own short-lived courage, and abruptly she dropped those proud eyes. “So I have been told.”
I expelled another relieved breath, slapped my thigh, and replaced the coin. “This is your father’s farm?” I asked conversationally, putting her off guard again.
“Yes. It has been in our family for several generations.” She seemed chagrined suddenly as if she did not intend to speak out of turn. Her discomfort only assured me.
“We live at Caverswall Castle,” I said. She stared at the gleaming silver of my stirrup. Surely it was finer than any plate she possessed at home. That knowledge reassured me further.
“I know who you are, my lord.”
As she said it, I saw all our servants and all the courtiers that have ever known me, saw them look and see the Thomas Giffard they expected, and I knew that not one of them truly did know me, know my thoughts on politics and faith, know my hopes and dreams for myself, understand how much I wanted to be my own man. “No,” I answered enigmatically. “I am afraid you do not.”
It was that small utterance which caused her to study my face more closely. She was only the daughter of a yeoman farmer from a long generation of farmers and landowners. She said so herself. But her long nose and incomprehensible eyes nevertheless intrigued me. How they looked at me! Perhaps through me. They never should look at me with anything but deference, and there were many occasions when my glove struck a similar expression from the face of a liveried stable boy. Yet on her, such sincerity was disarming.
“I must go,” I said. I leaned forward over the saddle bow, beckoning her closer by a softer manner. “Should I come this way again, I would be bound to see you, would I not?”
An expression looking neither frightened nor encouraged crossed her eyes. She nodded, and I acknowledged it with a smile before riding away, the shadows of a distant copse swallowing me.
Later—often—I relived the encounter in my idle hours while supposedly penning Latin. Caverswall was over seven miles away from that unusual farm girl. My thoughts were not of dalliance, for there were far more attractive girls in my father’s castle, and it was not long before I made the acquaintance of some of them eager to please the lord’s son. Curiously, when my pleasure was spent and I fashioned their faces in my mind, it was mostly Isabella Launder I saw.
Why did she intrigue me so? My young heart was not engorged with lust for her, nor was I aroused to my usual anger at her discourteous treatment of me. Perhaps it was that very thing which intrigued the most. Her bravery. Her honesty.
Not more than a fortnight later, I found myself trotting my horse before the gate at the end of Yeoman Launder’s lane. Two chatting dairymaids carrying their buckets beside her looked up and noticed me first but, after a brief acknowledging bow, they returned to their gossip.
Isabella saw me and stopped. She set down her bucket and straightened her napron. It was stained and damp with yellow, soured milk, and it briefly crossed my mind to discard the very idea. Faith! What was I doing there? Then I remembered the honesty in her eyes, and I ignored the napron while she walked alone down the long lane to test her fingers on the wet stone of the gateposts.
I smiled. “Good day, Mistress.”
“My lord,” she said with an awkward curtsey.
Chuckling, I glanced toward the house and the dairymaids who looked back at us, whispering to one another. “You are occupied.”
“No!” She almost lunged forward, but stopped herself, hiding the action by grasping my horse’s bridle and stroking the velvet nose. “That is…I have many chores, but have a moment for you, my lord.”
“Mistress, I have been thinking about…well, when last we met. I cannot seem to wrest it from my mind, in fact.” Her face took on a pall as if she would burst into tears and I was quick to add, “No one has ever spoken to me like you have. Well…my sisters, perhaps.” This did little to alleviate her anguish. I slid from the horse and found to my distress she stood taller than I. To show sincerity, I doffed my hat. “Father says I am a bit reckless…and then to toss a coin at you…well. That showed little courtesy.”
“It�
�it was I who…who was rude to you…”
And there it was. That same obsequious tenor I came to loath from fawning servants and lying courtiers. “Stop it! I cannot stomach it.”
She drew back, long fingers covering her horrified mouth. Instinctively, I knew she would bolt, and I grabbed her before she could. With all her might she wrestled with me but I pushed her up against a tree and held her arms at her sides, her back pressed against the bark. Tears made her face even more ugly, all wet streaks and red-dappled cheeks. “Mistress, I mean you no hurt!” For I knew she feared retribution from me when all I wanted was…what? I knew not. Releasing her I stepped back and ran my fingers through my hair. I paced, my bodkin smarting my thigh. “It is most extraordinary.”
“What is?” She snuffled, pushing her dirty palm over her face, making more of a mess of it.
“You. You did not seem afraid of me a fortnight ago.”
“I am now!”
“I do not want your fear. Can you understand? I want…what you did before. I want your sincerity. Your candor.”
“What for?” Her eyes darted this way and that. She was still trapped between the tree and myself. “Is that not what your kind want? Fear?”
I grasped the horse’s reins and trudged along the road. She tentatively followed, walking on the far side of the beast, its warm flank keeping a proper distance between us. I glanced back at her over the saddle. “Perhaps you are right. But I do not. In fear, there is no trust, no true loyalty.”
“We fear God.”
I shook my head. “We fear God because He is powerful, but He loves us. When you crack the whip of fear alone without love, then…then I suppose you get back what you deserve.”
Roses in the Tempest Page 2