The more I concentrated on her image the greater the ache in my heart, and it grew, this notion, with fearful enormity. Surely it was not possible. Far more beautiful women crossed my path, delicate creatures, demure, dainty. They did not possess her Amazonian height, or her callused hands, or those heavy brows more like a boy’s. They were clever with words and currying, these women, not like her blunt assessments. They smelt of perfume, not of barnyard.
In my desperation to deny it, to compare her to worthier women, my own logic faltered on something so very simple, so obvious that it never before occurred to me. My heart was jealous. Past the callow depths of me was a better Thomas Giffard, the one seen through Isabella’s eyes. The Thomas Giffard I could be, if I had heeded her years of advice.
The Thomas Giffard who realized at last—and very much too late—that he was dreadfully in love with her!
I felt a painful hemorrhage in my chest.
So simple. I loved her. I loved her plain language and the sardonic tilt of her head. I loved how much she cared for that damned garden and those roses of hers. I loved that she was not disposed to poetry or philosophy, and had no clue how to debate the finer points of faith. She knew neither politics nor schemes, and for that I loved her, too. “Dear God in Heaven…” Worse. Did she love me, in all my ineloquence? In all the years of knowing one another? “Oh Jesu!”
The tingle of a shadow crossed over me and I slowly raised my head. A servant. “Sir John awaits, my lord,” he said.
“He awaits,” I mumbled with ill humor. “He can wait till the Devil comes!” I pushed the servant aside, sprinted down a flight of steps, and ran out to the stable’s courtyard.
ISABELLA LAUNDER
Autumn, 1515
Blackladies
IX
“Hark! My lover—here he comes
Springing across the mountains, leaping across the hills…”
–Song of Songs 2:8
The bells jangled in the back of my thoughts until Dame Elizabeth gently touched my shoulder. “Is it not your day to act as porter, Mistress Isabella?”
“Bless me,” I sighed. “It is indeed. Little wonder the prioress has me attend the gate so often. Perhaps it is to instill remembrance of that duty for which I oft forget.” I rose and left the pleasant room for the late afternoon light of the cloister. A breeze came up, and with it the aroma of autumn, of country bonfires and musty damp. It put me in a charitable mood of my present life at Blackladies. Three months had passed since I entered the gate, and I was beginning to feel at home here, and reconciled to tutoring myself to a different kind of devotion: that of God, not of Thomas. Cristabell’s words still rang in my head, and I was determined to make this not a sanctuary from the world but my true place in the world. I was satisfied to call Blackladies home. As a cloistered nun, I would never leave its grounds, using my time to till the soil or work in the many places required of me. I was pleased to do so, for though Dame Cristabell still insisted on indifference toward me, I did not miss my father’s grange as I thought I might, nor did I miss my father, nor Agnes, nor even Robert. Nor could I muster guilt at this confession. There was no wall or arch on Rafe Launder’s farm that I longed to see again. No family member I pined for. I conformed to this place, the flavor of the Rule and its discipline. Despite Cristabell, I made good acquaintance of Meg and Dame Elizabeth, and I began to find my satisfaction within prayer and the little cloister garden.
My mind was emptied of all as I made my way through the cloister. I was even cheered as I turned the corner, anxious to give a pleasant countenance to the tradesman or farmer who rang the bell so impatiently.
When I raised my eyes, my amiable greeting caught on a gasp. The face I could not excise from my mind, the body that haunted my dreams, paced before the iron grate, sword slapping his thigh with each impatient whirl on his heel. He wore no hat and his collar was left untied, exposing dots of sweat at the base of his throat.
He heard my step and jerked his head, careering toward the grate, curling whitening fingers around the protecting grille. “Isabella! God’s body! Look at you!”
“Thomas.” My mind shut down. I merely stared at the toes of his boots. Such fine leather and so finely tailored to his feet. His spurs gleamed dully under splatters of mud.
He rattled the stern grating, gritting his teeth in a desperate grimace. “Open this! I must speak with you.”
I took a step back and shook my head. “I cannot, Thomas. We are not allowed out.”
“We? Oh, Isabella!” Pressing his forehead against the bars he stared at me with dark-rimmed eyes, from my feet to my veil-covered head. “Have I brought you to this? May God forgive me.”
“You have not brought me to this, and it is conceit to think so.”
“But this is damnable! You cannot become a …a nun! How foolish and selfish! It is absurd!”
I frowned. “And what is it to you, Thomas Giffard? You are a married man. You best go back to your bride.”
His lips clamped tightly, quivering the dark beard. He was a bridegroom three months. His wrinkled brow pressed against the rusty metal. “Isabella,” he whispered, rolling his head along the bar. “If I only had known you would do this…”
“I did not know myself, Thomas, until the moment of decision. It was either this or marry a man of my father’s choosing.”
He cast himself from the grating and furiously paced. I watched him helplessly.
“Why are you here, Thomas?”
He stopped. His normally erect posture slumped with desolation. “To…to see you. I…I did not know. I only heard today.”
I told myself I was stronger than this, but to see his face in all its forlorn shadows and to feel his enigmatic presence again caused my will to crumble with unwanted tears. I covered my face with my hands.
Thomas rushed to the bars and yanked them. “Curse this! Isabella, let me in!” I waved my hands in refusal, unable to speak. He reached through, trying to touch me. “Do not weep. I knew this to be a mistake! You are so pigheaded! Tell them you have made a mistake and leave here.”
I rubbed my fingers across my ruined face and dropped my hands to my sides with a capitulating shrug. “It is not a mistake. We have both made our decisions and must surrender to them.”
“I cannot accept that. You do not need this mummery. You can return to Beech if you desire.”
“To what end? Marry?” A surge of fierce emotion welled, and still blinded by tears, I stomped to the grating and stood before it, hands curling around the iron. “What would you have me do?”
My strength seemed to sap his, and he leaned a shoulder against the bars, sliding to the ground, resting his flaccid wrists on upraised knees. I looked down upon his vulnerable head, that musky dark mane. “I do not know, Isabella. The world has fallen apart. It has lost its meaning. I am yoked with a wife I do not love, and my true beloved is now lost in a nunnery. My God. What have I done to deserve this? What great sin have I committed to lose you?”
My breath held, stifled by those incomprehensible words; words he spoke with his own lips. Did I hear them? Could they be believed? “Thomas…do you call me…beloved?”
Gently shaking his head, he turned to look at me. It was the same face, the same Thomas, but the look was different. Oh, he had smiled indulgently at me many times before, or chuckled at some ineptitude of mine—always at my expense, but never with cruelty. This time it was a potent expression of something that I longed for only hours ago in restless slumber.
He rose, and, laying his hands on the grating, his gentle eyes gazed into mine. “I have been a fool, Isabella,” he said softly. “I did not see what was always before my eyes. I did not see that my dearest friend was also my own heart. And I have only just discovered this, too, today. Dare I say it aloud? Isabella…I love you! Not as a sister. Not as a cousin. But as a man loves a woman.”
“No!” I clamped my hands over my ears. “Why? Why now, Thomas? Why too late?”
“Never too late, Isa
bella. I am here now. Open the gate.”
“No.” Even as I said it, I could not move. I offered no resistance when Thomas snatched the keys from between the iron grate, unlocked the door, and flung it aside. Even watching him approach, I could do nothing. He stood above me, and then my stiff muscles released when he embraced me. I shied like any untried colt, and sought to move away from the strangeness of his arms, of his chest pressed against mine. I felt that chest swell as he panted. Was it I who caused such distress? Plain Isabella? The thought amazed, barely completely formed, when he leaned toward me. I stared at his chin, counting the hairs of his beard, so close was I—yet this helped not at all, for it put me in view of those lips drawing slowly, parting in a smile.
“Isabella, you cannot possibly be afraid of me?”
I held my breath. His smile softened and drew closer. His lips lowered until they rested upon mine, growing soft and warm.
No man had ever before kissed me. I closed my eyes, absorbing the unbelievable sensations of Thomas’ mouth caressing my lips. The fit was perfect, like two hands clasping.
I became aware not only of the velvet of his lips, but of his heart hammering, of the bristly feel of his beard on my skin, of the pungent scent of him, the strength of his fingers clinging to me. Losing myself, I returned the affectionate embrace with clumsy passion, feeling the tendrils of his hair between my fingers.
How tenderly he kissed, a match to my own virtuous efforts. How many years did I dream of this? Lips, moist and warm, a part of my own. Breath sweet upon my cheek. His strong arms about me, gently embracing, fingers kneading my flesh beneath its tattered gown.
But gradually, his encircling arms tightened, his mouth insisted, opening with maturing intensity. Following at first, I became frightened by his need…and that of my own.
The dream faded. Reality, like a splash of frigid water, awoke the sleeper. I tore my lips from his, pushing the edge of a hand against his chest to dislodge myself.
Thomas, gasping with passion, merely stared at me, our kiss still moistening his mouth. No longer were his arms a welcomed place, but a foreign one on whose shores I no longer belonged and dared not tread.
Dreadful, this sudden change in something so longed for!
“No, Thomas!” I whispered.
“You deny me?” he rasped.
“With my very being. It is wrong. For both of us. You chose to marry as I chose this place. We made vows. Would you be unfaithful to them?”
“I do not love her!”
“Then you must try! With nobility comes responsibilities…and consequences.” I brushed a tear from my cheek with the back of my hand. “It is your heritage at fault, Thomas, which cannot truly be blamed.”
“Then to hell with my heritage!”
“Easily said by a rich man.”
He glared at me. “What is meant by that?”
“‘It is easier to pass a camel through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter into the kingdom of Heaven.’”
“Why are you so cruel to me? Do you not see how I suffer?”
The knot in my belly tightened. “And what of my suffering?”
“I am not a fool, Isabella. I know you suffer. But for a woman—”
“You think it easier for a woman? Well…perhaps. We are practical creatures. We know our limitations. We…accept.”
“But we are so well-matched, you and I, like pieces on a chessboard.”
“Opposing colors, Thomas.” I well understood the lay of a chessboard. Certain pieces may move across its landscape with impunity while others are confined by virtue of their purpose.
His eyes were moist as they gazed at me. His affliction was real. For the first time in his life, he was being denied. He was truly helpless, as helpless as I was. It must have been a blow to his pride, and a Giffard’s pride was a grand thing, indeed. There was also a boyish vulnerability to that face of three and twenty years, trying to bear its nobility with dignity.
Partly in empathy, partly with sadness, we peered silently at one another.
“I know it is my fault,” he whispered. “I never knew before. I never knew how you felt. And then I did not know until today that I felt the same. I should have stayed away.” He closed his eyes. Did he think by his will alone that circumstances would change? Slowly he opened his eyes and gazed tenderly. “But a nun, Isabella! You know my mind in these matters.”
“It is my mind that is of consequence, Thomas, is it not?”
“You are so stubborn.” His pout dropped years from his face. “Will…will you be well?”
I sighed. “I am well, Thomas. I am adjusting.”
“But shall I?”
His warm fingers pressed over mine, and for a moment I thought to snatch mine away, but the touch was so familiar—God forgive me—I could not bear to move. It was Thomas who moved first, leaving me shamed and repentant. He walked back through the gate and slowly pulled it closed.
“Perhaps I am meant for a better purpose, Thomas,” I said. “One cannot know why conditions turn as they do. Only God knows.”
Grimacing, he shook his head. “To be a poor nun in this sty of a priory? I cannot see that this is to a better purpose.”
“We cannot know what our Lord plans for us. That is what I meant.”
“I know what you meant. But this place…could you not have chosen something better?”
I bit my lip. To suggest that this was also Sir John’s choice was to annihilate any relationship he had with his father.
I held my tongue and stared at him, at a face on which I longed to cultivate a smile, on whose lips I would plant another kiss had I courage enough to defy God. “You must return to your bride, while I tend to my own duties here. I, too, am to wed in a year’s time.” I fingered my rosary.
“Is there nothing I can say?”
I already turned, unable to withstand the forlorn plea in his eyes. “That time is past.” The words constricted my throat, but I instantly knew them to be true. It was time to put away childish things, to face the life now offered. To greet the Bridegroom. Stiffly I walked away, but I knew Thomas did not move, watching my every step.
THOMAS GIFFARD
Late autumn, 1515
Chillington Hall
X
“If you pressed me to say why I loved him,
I can say no more than it was because he was he and I was I.”
–Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, 1580
Weeks passed since last I saw Isabella veiled and swathed in a novice’s livery. But still I brooded. Dorothy’s bed held no comfort for me, and so alone I spent my nights. My days were equally spent in solitude, walking the grounds of Chillington.
October fled like a robber from a house, leaving in its wake the cold breath of coming winter. The green leaves began to crisp, boldly glittering their gold in a mostly white sky. I tried to breathe in its earthy damp or the sweet esters of a field mown to stubble, but my spirit was as empty as last year’s rabbit warrens.
Isabella. My Isabella. Not mine at all. Not sister. Not cousin. Not lover. Too late did I know my own mind, something my own father—curse him—could recognize that I did not. If I had only known before, I could have had the happiness I sought, become the man only half-imagined.
I could have been married to her.
I kicked at a shriveled apple that had fallen dried and hardened from its tree. It rolled down an incline into a trickling ditch.
But would I have married her? That damnable question did not cease coursing through my mind even in sleep. Would I have had the courage to defy Father and marry whom I wished? Isabella would gain the Giffard legacy nothing. The dower was too small to consider with any sobriety. She was not even the heir to her father’s grange. Marrying Isabella would have been the folly of the county, and yet it would have been my fondest desire. I told myself I would have been brave enough to do it, but I doubted the sincerity of that even as it brushed my mind. I would have lost all: lands, monies, respect, and viability at court
. It was not a proper match for a Giffard.
I brooded over it even as I glanced toward the house. It was not uncommon at court for men to put aside their wives in a decree of nullity for a better match, though profit was usually the reason, not love. But I could not put Dorothy reasonably aside without great scandal and loss of her dower rights. That would put me in no better stead than I was before.
“What is the matter with you, Thomas?” I scolded myself. “Is money all that matters?”
“It is a damn sight better than poverty.”
I lurched back. George Throckmorton emerged from the hatching of shadows.
“George! God in Heaven!” My racing heart slowed, and I looked his muddy clothes up and down. “What brings you here? Let us back to the house so you can clean yourself.”
“Not just yet. I was passing through, and thought to stop in on the newly wedded lord. Instead, I find you fumbling about in a dead grove, alone, and without your wife. Do you tire of her so quickly?”
A sigh heaved my shoulders and I shook my head. “Ah, George. What have I done?”
“What have you done?” When I said no more, he stopped and took my arm. Throckmorton’s reddish-brown beard lay long upon his chest, for he wished to fashion himself an older more mature man at court.
“Thomas, something deep vexes you. Can you not say?”
For a moment I thought I might, the words rolling over themselves in my mind. But gazing into his eyes, I suddenly thought better of it. Feebly I offered, “Marriage is not what I expected.”
He smiled heartily. “Is it ever? Our expectations are greater than our realities. We are like diners at a sumptuous feast, only our eyes are bigger than our bellies. Worry not. The sooner you grow her belly, the better you will feel.”
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