by Mary Daheim
Sorcha fixed an appraising gaze on the doctor’s face. Bourgoing was not only kind but trustworthy and honest. Yet Sorcha sensed he was being evasive, if not actually lying to her. It would be disrespectful to accuse him of perfidy, however well-intended. Was it possible that Gavin Napier was far more seriously ill than the doctor had acknowledged? A tingle of alarm crawled up Sorcha’s spine.
“Is he in danger?” The words were spoken rapidly, but in a hushed, breathless voice.
Bourgoing’s high forehead furrowed. “No, no. But he is very weak.” He smiled at Sorcha in reassurance. “Tomorrow I shall bring you fresh news, perhaps of a more sanguine nature.”
To Sorcha, tomorrow seemed very far away. Frantically, she searched her mind for a pretext to see Napier immediately. At the end of the silver chain she wore around her waist was a ball encircled with pearls. Sorcha snatched at it, cupping the bauble in her palm. “See here, good Doctor, I have a shred of the Virgin’s mantle, brought to me by my father from Jerusalem.” Inwardly, Sorcha blanched at the blatant tie; she possessed no such relic, nor had her father ever ventured as far as the Holy Land. But Dr. Bourgoing wouldn’t know that. Gazing up into the physician’s kindly face, Sorcha opened her green eyes wide and tried to strike a pose that she hoped would be simultaneously pious and appealing. “If I could but hold the blessed fabric against Father Napier’s forehead, I’m sure he would recover more quickly.”
The furrows deepened on Dr. Bourgoing’s forehead. He looked from Sorcha to the silver globe resting in her hand. She had always struck him as an unconventional sort of maid, not given to girlish simpering or the exertion of feminine wiles. A bit untamed, no doubt due to her Highland heritage, but an open, intelligent young woman whose sense of duty had brought her to serve at Queen Mary’s pitiful parody of a royal court.
Bourgoing shrugged and smiled. “ ’Twould do no harm.” He raised a cautionary finger. “But only for a moment. You must not wake him.”
Sorcha nodded. “Of course. The Blessed Mother hears short petitions as well as lengthy ones.” She gave Dr. Bourgoing a demure smile.
To Sorcha’s relief, the physician didn’t follow her into the bedchamber. As she closed the door quietly behind her, Sorcha was forced to adjust her eyes to the gloom. Except for one stubby candle, the room lay in darkness. The pale winter sun had already set, but while a fire was laid in the grate, no one had yet kindled it into flame.
Treading softly, Sorcha made her way to the bed. The outlines of furniture, hangings, walls, and windows began to take shape. Sorcha was still several feet away from the big canopied bed when she realized that it was empty. For one panicked moment, Sorcha feared that Gavin Napier had died. As a small child, she had imagined that dying meant people simply disappeared, with all earthly evidence of their existence being assumed into heaven. The youthful concept struck her for only a split second, but it was sufficient to send a violent shudder throughout her entire body.
“Brainless ninny,” Sorcha murmured aloud, hoping that the sound of her own voice would bolster her courage. With an unsteady step, she went to the bed; the counterpane was pulled back, but the sheets were cool to the touch. The suspicions that Dr. Bourgoing’s lack of candor had stirred now began to run amok. If Napier had been critically ill, he certainly wouldn’t have risen from bed and climbed out the window. Yet if the illness was feigned, why had Dr. Bourgoing allowed her to come into Napier’s bedchamber? Suddenly more frightened for herself than for Napier, Sorcha whirled around to race toward the door and test the latch.
Even as she reached out, Sorcha felt a movement as brisk as a winter wind from somewhere behind her; her hand fell away from the door at the same moment strong arms went around her shoulders.
“Don’t cry out,” commanded Gavin Napier. “You’ll upset Dr. Bourgoing.”
Sorcha had stiffened at his touch, but relaxed sufficiently to feel her body lean against Napier’s. She craned her neck to look up at him. “God’s teeth, what manner of prank is this?”
Slowly, Napier released her, though one hand lingered at her breast. She turned to face him, pushing the heavy hair out of her eyes. “You’re not ill! Indeed, you’re dressed to ride!”
Napier glanced down as if surprised by her declaration. He seemed to be studying the long, black leather boots, the heavy serge cloak flung over one shoulder, the roughly stitched calfskin gloves. “I am,” he admitted, his mouth turned down at the corners in his dark beard. “I didn’t know you were here.”
Sorcha looked up into the hunter’s eyes, which were in deep shadow. It seemed to her that Gavin Napier was already very far away, as if they had never made passionate love in the deserted chapel. She felt quite cold and had to step back to lean against a straight-backed chair for support. “Where are you going?” The words were thin and hollow.
Napier took a breath that seemed to tax him, opened his mouth to speak, clamped it shut, and turned to the bureau, where he picked up a black bonnet trimmed with a single gray feather. “I’m going away.” He hesitated, still not looking at Sorcha. “My task is finished here.”
Sorcha’s teeth had begun to chatter as a fearsome chill overtook her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Or maybe I do,” she amended unsteadily, “but you must take me with you.”
“No.” The word fell between them like the last mournful note of a dirge.
“Yes!” Sorcha flew at him, hands clutching at his arm. “I love you! You love me! You said so!”
He started to pull away, then stopped and turned to gaze down into her desperate face. “Of course I love you. But I’m a priest. It’s impossible, Sorcha.” He shook his head slowly, firmly.
Her nails dug deeper into his arm. “A pox on your priesthood, Gavin Napier!” Defiance strengthened her voice. “You are no more a priest than I am!”
Napier’s jaw dropped just a fraction as he stared down at Sorcha. “You’re daft. Where do you get such fancies?” His effort at laughing away her accusations degenerated into a grunt.
Sorcha’s determination had helped quiet her trembling limbs. “I’ve met another Napier, Adam by name. He’s your brother.” She paused, seeing his mouth tighten. “And he’s crippled and could not come to Scotland or England until recently because of his health. So now that he’s here, you must leave. Though why at this precise moment, when you and I have just found love, I’m baffled thrice over.” She dropped her hand from his arm to gesture toward the door. “I must surmise that Dr. Bourgoing knows the truth as well. Has he not interrupted us because he thinks we’re in bed together?”
“Christ!” Napier flung the black bonnet back on the bureau so hard that it slid off the edge onto the floor. He reached out to grasp Sorcha by the wrist, giving her a sharp shake. The brown eyes narrowed, but his dismay was still evident. “How long have you known?”
Though Sorcha was still distressed and anxious, she couldn’t help but savor her triumph of deduction. “I only realized the truth the other night. In the chapel.” She refused to flinch from his glance but knew that her cheeks were flushing. “No priest would have taken me there, no matter what religion that chapel serves.” Glancing down to where he still held her wrist, she smiled faintly at the strong, brown fingers that circled her flesh. “I can’t believe how blind I was! I should have guessed months ago, back at Chartley, when I met Adam Napier along the road. From a distance he looked exactly like you. And while he didn’t admit to your acquaintanceship, he asked too many questions regarding your whereabouts. The world may be riddled with coincidence, but two Napiers hovering around the Queen of Scots tried my credulity.” She wriggled her fingers, but he still held her wrist fast. “Don’t you think,” Sorcha demanded, “that you should tell me the rest of your strange tale?”
Napier’s jaw was set, and his eyes had turned hard. But he finally let go of her wrist and sat down on the bed, shoving the rumpled counterpane aside. “Your conjecture is damnably accurate,” he admitted, indicating with an absent wave of his hand that Sorcha shou
ld sit next to him. “Adam is my older brother. He was ordained in France a few years after our family exiled itself there.” Napier stopped speaking for a moment as Sorcha seated herself on the bed, feet dangling a few inches above the rush-covered floor. “Adam’s great ambition in life was to bring unity to the Catholic clans of Scotland, so that they might join forces against the presbyters. He had also pledged himself to serve Mary Stuart as long as she lived. But,” he went on, a painful expression crossing his face, “about two years ago, Adam was captured by the Dutch. They tortured him. He was crippled. But at last they finally let him go.”
Sorcha shuddered, recalling the cheerful countenance of Adam Napier, who must have suffered unspeakably. “God’s teeth,” she breathed, “how valiant he must be!”
Napier’s curt nod acknowledged the truth of her statement. “He was sent back at last to Amiens. We were sure he would die, but eventually he rallied, though he had lost the use of his legs. Twice he set out for Scotland; twice he was forced to return before taking ship from France. His health was still very poor, and at last he asked me to take his place until he grew stronger.”
The stumpy candle was almost out. Napier leaned toward the little nightstand, extracted another candle from a sandalwood box, and lighted it from the dying flame. “I was reluctant to act out such a deceit, but I feared that if I did not and Adam worsened, I would never forgive myself for refusing his request. Nor,” he added, turning to Sorcha and dropping his voice almost to a whisper, “was I certain that I, too, did not have a priestly vocation. At the very least, I was—I am—as concerned about the fate of the Catholic Church in Scotland and England as is my brother. In time, I shall also find out if, like him, I am also destined to take Holy Orders.”
The fearsome chill began to creep over Sorcha again. “But … but you couldn’t be a priest! How could you, when you love me?” She had to force herself to keep from clutching at him.
“Oh, Sorcha ….” Napier shook his head, then rubbed his temple. “You open up my very soul! You dig into the raw wounds of my heart! Can you not leave me be, for the love of Christ?”
With a distress that matched his own, Sorcha saw the haunted look surface in his eyes and the pallor that seemed to lurk beneath his dark skin. “Why say that? I’m offering you my heart, my life! You’ve already taken my body!”
Napier’s head sunk into his hands. “I know that!” His response was strangled deep in his throat. “I wish to God I had not! Then I would never have known how ….” He halted abruptly, his head jerking up, his mouth locked tight.
Tentatively, Sorcha put a hand on his shoulder. “We’ve had so little time to think this through. Stay, my love, at least for a few days. Please!” For a brief moment, she let her head rest against his arm, feeling the rough serge cloak touch her cheek. “Please,” she repeated, more softly this time.
Sorcha felt rather than saw him shake his whole body in refusal. “I cannot. Mary Stuart is to die within the next few days. The executioner is already on the road to Fotheringhay. My brother waits but a quarter of an hour from here to take my place and give the Queen the comfort of a true priest.”
For a moment, Sorcha was distracted from her own problems. “Ah—then that is why you were supposedly ill—so no one would wonder why you couldn’t walk.” She saw Napier give a single nod. “But the Queen! Sweet Virgin, somehow after all this time, I thought perhaps she would be spared!”
“Nay, not with those English hounds of hell on Elizabeth’s heels.” With a swift motion, Napier rose from the bed to open one of the narrow castle windows. “The moon is rising. I must be gone. I’d hoped to leave without Bourgoing knowing, so that he could be honestly surprised if anything should go awry.”
Sorcha was also on her feet. “Gavin!” she cried and then stared at him openmouthed. “God’s teeth! I scarcely know you!”
Napier started toward her but stopped, planting his boots firmly among the rushes. “You know enough. But it’s best if you forget. Oh, Sorcha,” he said on a long, plaintive sigh, “I’m sorry!”
His assertion was so inadequate that Sorcha barely took it in. It was impossible that he was leaving. She wanted no highborn lairds, no wealthy noblemen, no royal princelings. Sorcha had set her heart—and her mind—on this man who was picking his bonnet up from the floor and adjusting the clasp of his serge cloak.
Sorcha set her fists on her hips and dug her heels into the rushes. “You will not go,” she averred, the green eyes flashing. “Or if you do, you will not go without me.” Seeing his big hand raised to refute her, Sorcha raced on. “I swear it, I’ll bring the guards down upon you, and you’ll never be able to reach your brother. I cannot lose you,” she asserted, ignoring the catch in her throat, “for if I do, my world is ended.”
The haunted eyes seemed to clear. An uncertain smile cut across the dark beard as Napier slowly moved toward Sorcha. “I underestimated your obstinacy. Though I should tell you that if you truly love me, you’ll let me go.” He uttered a short, hollow laugh. “You will not listen though, I fear.”
As a wave of relief lifted Sorcha’s spirit, she offered Napier a radiant smile and eagerly watched him reach out his left hand to her. She never saw the right fist that came up to catch her on the jaw. In the place where she dwelled for an unaccounted time, there was only a lush green meadow and a silver stream where Sorcha ran barefoot among the lilies and joyfully proclaimed her love for Gavin Napier.
When Sorcha awoke, she was in Napier’s bed, and he was gone.
PART THREE
1589
Chapter 17
The heavy scent of lilacs mingled with the acrid odor of a hundred candles in the small stone chapel of the Dominican convent at Le Petit Andely. Through narrow windows wrought in exquisite stained glass, the morning sun cast a warm glow over the community as its members chanted Terce in Latin. In a pew near the back of the chapel, Sorcha knelt with Rosmairi, whose profile was all but hidden by the postulant’s white flared coif.
The rustle of linen habits and the soft slapping of sandals on the stone floor were the only sounds when the service ended. Sorcha watched the nuns file out in decorous silence, then moved into line with Rosmairi behind the others.
Outside the chapel’s arched entrance, Sorcha took a deep breath of the fragrant spring air and sighed. Beyond the lovingly tended garden of vegetables, herbs, and flowers stood the guest house with its slanting roof. Sorcha had resided there for over a year in a small, sparsely furnished room that looked out on the River Seine and across to the village of Le Petit Andely. She had come to the convent to keep her sister company while Rosmairi grappled with the festering wound of her aborted romance with George Gordon. Yet if Rosmairi found balm at Sainte Vierge des Andelys, Sorcha had few illusions about the religious life providing a solution to her own problems. Gavin Napier was the only answer, and Sorcha refused to believe she could ever find happiness without him.
Still, she found a measure of tranquility within the convent walls. Sainte Vierge des Andelys had been built on a small wooded island in the middle of the languorous Seine, giving the holy refuge an air of peaceful isolation.
Rosmairi was bending down to scold Marcel, an ill-natured goose that constantly bedeviled the convent's other geese and chickens. At eighteen, Rosmairi’s soft features had turned more angular. If she had been a pretty child, she was growing into a beautiful woman. But the red-gold hair was hidden under a coif, the gracefully rounded body was concealed by a white linen habit, and even her perfect complexion was less remarkable without color to enhance it.
“Ah, your sister, she is the only one to make Marcel behave,’’ said a droll voice just behind Sorcha. Mother Honorine’s bowed upper lip smiled in a curious way that revealed only her two large front teeth. She paused, regarding Sorcha with a frank, yet confidential gaze. “It would seem Rosmairi has put misfortune behind her.”
Sorcha turned pensive eyes on Rosmairi, who had joined one of the other postulants to scoop handfuls of grain from a
sturdy wooden tub. “I pray she has,” replied Sorcha with more fervor than conviction. “She rarely speaks of the past.”
The bowed lips relaxed into a less jocular, though pleasant, expression. “Praise the Lord you two are so close. It must be a comfort.”
A sidelong glance revealed to Sorcha that Mother Honorine wore no pious demeanor, nor rolled her eyes heavenward in the assumption that the Bon Dieu was nodding approval of her comments. Not only was the Mother Superior a Frenchwoman, but a Guise by birth, and a blood relation to Mary, Queen of Scots. She was a practical person imbued with sufficient worldliness to discuss the basest of human frailties without flinching. She knew why Rosmairi had come to the convent of Sainte Vierge des Andelys. It was not the first time a young woman had fled there to mend a broken heart. But Sorcha’s reason for joining her sister as a guest in the convent had never been questioned. Until now.
“We shall see in good time if Rosmairi’s vocation is sincere or merely of convenience,” Mother Honorine went on as they began to stroll along the stone path between the rows of cabbage and lettuce seedlings. “As for you, ma chère, is your visit here gaining you spiritual or temporal grace?”
The inquiry was so artful and unexpected that Sorcha was caught off guard. She hesitated, distractedly watching Rosmairi scatter grain among the geese. “My parents didn’t wish for Ros to come to France alone. Even though our brother Rob is studying with a kinsman at Compiègne, he isn’t close enough to visit much.” Sorcha avoided Mother Honorine’s gaze, instead watching Rosmairi walk sedately toward the henhouse.
“Very sensible, yes.” Mother Honorine nodded sagely, slipping her tapering fingers inside the draperies of her white linen sleeves. “Unselfish, too, is it not so?” She had turned to Sorcha, tilting her high-coiffed head to one side. “That is, you are young and lovely. Most sisters, I fear, would not surrender the days of their youth for the sake of another. Instead, les beaux hommes would divert their time and attention, eh?”