Patricia Ryan - [Fairfax Family 01]

by Falcons Fire

  “Me! That’s absurd.”

  “It’s all absurd,” Bernard countered, laughing. “Fantastically absurd, and ridiculously easy. If I denounce you, you’ll stand trial and have to prove your innocence, which might be rather difficult. You criticize the Church, you rarely attend mass, you read pagan writings... You will most certainly be branded a heretic, and then you’ll be tied to a stake and roasted alive. Can you imagine the agony? You can’t save your lady, but you can still save yourself.”

  “If I leave England immediately,” Thorne said, and Bernard nodded. “That’s clever, I have to admit. If I do leave, you won’t have my meddlesome influence in the trial, and I’ll be abandoning Blackburn, which you can talk Olivier into granting to you. If I stay to help Martine, you’ll see that I burn, and you’ll still end up with Blackburn.”

  “There is only one logical choice for you to make.”

  “Love has very little to do with logic,” Thorne said. Bernard rolled his eyes.

  “Why are you doing this?” Thorne asked. “Knowing that you can get Blackburn even if you release her, why go through with the trial? Why let her die?”

  Bernard stood quickly, knocking his chair over. “For the simple, unadulterated pleasure of watching her writhe in torment as the flames peel the flesh from her bones!”

  Thorne leaped on the table and lunged at Bernard, but Boyce and two others grabbed him and hauled him back.

  Bernard laughed hysterically. “For the thrill of listening to her shriek and beg and moan. That’s why I’m doing this, woodsman.”

  Thorne struggled against the three pairs of massive arms.

  “She made a fool out of me!” Bernard screamed. More quietly he said, “So did you. But you’ll see I’m not so easily bested. I hope you don’t leave England. I want to see you burn, as well. There’s no greater form of suffering known to man. Nor, I expect, any more enthralling form of entertainment.” He turned toward the stairwell. “Get him out of here,” he told Boyce. “And don’t give him back his weapons until he’s across the drawbridge.”

  Chapter 24

  “It’s time, milady,” said the guard from the door of the windowless little chamber.

  “Just a moment, please.” Martine finished plaiting her single braid and secured it with a short bit of string, then slipped on the white linen coif they had given her, letting its ties hang loose. She smoothed down her sacklike gray kirtle, noting how it hung on her thin frame, evidence of the single daily serving of brown bread that had been her sustenance during the month of her imprisonment. She knew it had been a month, because the guards told her the date whenever she asked, and today, the first day of her trial, was June the second.

  They’d dressed her almost exactly as the girls had dressed at St. Teresa’s, in a severe uniform resembling that of a novice. That was good. It would enhance the impression of piety that she hoped to project, an impression that at one time would have been flagrant fiction, but now could almost pass for the truth. For she had learned something new over the course of this long and arduous month during which she had been questioned ceaselessly, deprived of food and sleep, and threatened not only with the flames of hell, but those of the pyre. She had learned to pray–not to pretend to pray because people were watching and it was what was expected, but to summon all the faith in her heart, inadequate though it might be, and beg God to show her the path that would save her.

  “Is this necessary?” she asked as the guard tied her hands in front of her.

  “Orders, milady,” he replied, leading her out of the chamber for the first time since her captivity had begun. Three other guards surrounded her and together escorted her through the dark stone passages of Battle Abbey to the room in which her trial would take place.

  It was a large room, with a dozen armed guards in attendance and scores of people seated on benches around the perimeter, every one of them looking at her. This was all she noticed before her eyes squeezed shut in response to the bright morning sunlight—sunlight she had long pined for but now couldn’t bear to face—streaming in through the windows.

  Is Thorne here? she wondered as her guards drew her forward, urging her down on a hard little stool in the middle of the room.

  Her stool was situated in the midst of a beam of sunlight so blinding that for a moment she could see nothing else. Someone said her name. She raised her bound hands to shield her eyes, but someone else snapped “Lower your hands!” so she did. Voices buzzed, the charges—now all too familiar to her—were read, and other things were said, but she took little note of them, struggling as she was to accustom her eyes to this searing light.

  When she finally got used to it and could take in her surroundings, she found that she sat facing Bishop Lambert, who occupied a high, canopied throne on a dais at the far end of the room; most of the onlookers were behind her. The throne, more majestic even than Queen Eleanor’s, was upholstered in one shade of red silk, the obese bishop in another. As he spoke, he gestured with his fleshy, bejeweled hands, which glittered and twinkled with every move. Above him hung an ornate, gilded crucifix. To his right a clerk sharpened his quill at one of those little writing desks like the one she had used at St. Dunstan’s. To his left, on a long bench, sat a row of black-clad priests, looking very much like crows on a tree branch.

  One of them rose and approached her. It was Father Simon. “Lady Falconer...”

  “Father Simon.”

  “My lady baroness,” the bishop intoned, “you are not to speak unless asked a direct question, and then you are to answer in a simple and straightforward manner. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, my lord bishop.” If meekness was what was required to avoid the stake, she would swallow her pride and be meek. All of her senses were alert. She must do and say only the right things, the things that would convince the bishop of her innocence.

  Bishop Lambert nodded to the clerk, who inked his quill, and then to the priest. “You may proceed, Father.”

  “My lady,” said Father Simon, “when did you receive your demon companion, who most often takes the shape of a cat?” The onlookers murmured briefly before the bishop’s upraised hand silenced them. The clerk hunched over his parchment, scratching away industriously.

  Martine blinked. “My... my what?”

  Simon pressed his lips together. “I believe you heard me. When did you receive the creature you call Loki?”

  “I... three years ago.”

  “And what form did your master take when he gave you this companion?”

  Martine took a deep breath and worded her answer carefully. “A man named Beal gave me Loki. He was a stable hand at St. Teresa’s.”

  Simon turned to the clerk. “Note that this Loki is a minor shape-shifting demon.” The clerk nodded as he wrote. “He was granted to her by her master in the form of a man three years ago at the Convent of St. Teresa in Bordeaux. ‘Beal’ is most likely a shortened form of `Beelzebub.’”

  Someone behind her said, “Oh, for God’s sake!”

  Thorne! She turned and saw him, on a bench against the wall to her right, sitting with Brother Matthew, Felda, and Geneva. He tried to rise, but Matthew held him down and whispered furiously into his ear as four guards closed in on them.

  “Lady Falconer, turn around,” the bishop demanded, but Thorne looked directly at her now, and said her name, and Martine couldn’t wrest her eyes from his. “Lord Falconer, you will be ejected from this room if you interrupt again, do you understand?”

  She saw her husband tense, his expression one of outrage, but then Matthew grabbed his arm and hissed something, and he marshaled his features. “Yes, my lord bishop,” he said stiffly.

  Bishop Lambert nodded to a guard behind her, who took her by the shoulders and forced her to face the front once more. As her eyes swept the benches along the wall, she noticed Bernard, sitting back with his legs crossed, smiling, and next to him, Lady Clare.

  The bishop nodded to Father Simon, who kept his back to her as he asked, “When y
our master copulates with you, does he continue to assume the form of his stable hand, or of some other being?”

  “Copulates with me!”

  “Answer!”

  “How can I answer that? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have no master!”

  Simon swung on her. “Heretic! We all have a master, and His name is God Almighty! How dare you so boldly deny His authority!”

  “I didn’t!”

  “You just did.”

  “Nay! You’re confusing me!”

  “Silence!” commanded Bishop Lambert. “Lady Falconer, you will cooperate with these proceedings or we’ll take you to the pyre immediately, do you understand?”

  Helpless and overwhelmed, Martine turned and glanced back toward Thorne. He looked furious, and very grim. Matthew met her eyes and nodded, as if encouraging her to answer the bishop.

  “Y-yes, my lord bishop,” she murmured. “I understand.”

  Father Simon said, “Lady Falconer’s rejection of God’s sovereignty is a matter of public knowledge. Guards, bring in the first witness.”

  There followed a procession of house servants from Harford Castle who stood before the bishop and swore that Martine, refusing to accept Ailith’s death, had been heard to say, To hell with God’s will. They testified also that she had used sorcery to revive the dead child and that Thorne had attacked Father Simon when he tried to prevent it.

  At midday the bishop suspended the trial for an hour, and Martine returned to her chamber for her bread and watered ale. When the proceedings resumed, a number of Bernard’s men attested to the fact that Edmond seemed incapable of consummating his marriage to her. Bernard himself testified about the jug of adulterated brandy found in his brother’s bedchamber. Not only did she poison Edmond, he claimed, but she forced his ailing wife to drink from a jug of claret later found to contain a suspicious sediment. He bowed his head and crossed himself as he described how the lady Estrude had become insensible within moments of ingesting the potion, and died shortly thereafter.

  The last witness of the afternoon was Clare.

  “My lady,” Father Simon began, “the matters which we must needs discuss at this inquiry are of a nature as to bruise the sensibilities of an innocent such as yourself. They are matters that pertain not only to marital affections, but to the marriage act itself. Much as it grieves us to subject you to such questioning, we beg you to understand that we do it to serve God’s purposes.”

  “I understand, Father,” Clare answered, her voice soft.

  Simon nodded. “Very well. During the time that you served Lady Falconer at Castle Blackburn, did it ever strike you that there was anything abnormal about her marriage?”

  An artful pause. “There were whispers. Among the servants. ‘Twas said there was no love lost between them. And that even though they shared a bed, they didn’t... that Lord Falconer didn’t care to exercise his marital rights.”

  “And why do you suppose that was?” the priest asked.

  “Well, I... I knew she was a sorceress,” Clare said. “Everyone knew it. Everyone at Harford, anyway. I just assumed she’d done something to keep him away from her, the same as she did Sir Edmond, God rest his soul.” She solemnly crossed herself, and Father Simon did the same.

  “That would appear to be the case,” said the priest. “Thank you for your testimony, my lady.”

  * * *

  That night, Martine dreamed that she was home again. It was a remarkably vivid dream, and very colorful. She saw the little panes of glass in her bedchamber windows, glass the color of seawater with tiny bubbles trapped inside. She saw beams of warm sunlight pour through those panes, casting luminous squares onto the colorful Saracen carpets. She saw her husband, asleep beneath the white down quilts that covered their bed. He woke up and looked at her. His eyes were so brilliantly blue, his gaze so intense, so full of yearning. She reached for him. He was gone.

  Thorne! She awoke with a jolt, crying out his name.

  She wasn’t home. She was imprisoned in Battle Abbey, standing trial for heresy. She might never see Blackburn Castle again. She might never be close enough to Thorne to touch him, or even to talk to him. He had given her a home, had made it warm and beautiful, had protected her. It tormented her to think she would never have the chance to thank him for that, to tell him the things she should have told him long ago. It no longer mattered to her that his passion for land overrode all other passions, making it impossible for him to love her; she understood now that this was simply his nature and he wasn’t to blame for it. What mattered was that he wasn’t Jourdain, but had long been paying for Jourdain’s sins.

  She felt the same wrenching despair that had so overwhelmed her when, as a child, she watched Rainulf ride away from St. Teresa’s, her heart swelling with words that she couldn’t give voice to. But this new despair was even worse than that, flavored as it was with the guilt of having hidden behind her pain for so long, creating a fortress around her soul as thick as the walls around Blackburn Castle—a fortress Thorne had never had a hope of breaking down.

  * * *

  As soon as the guards led Martine into the big room for the second day of the trial, she looked for Thorne. He sat in the same place as the day before, and he smiled at her. Something lit his eyes. Hope? Encouragement? He tilted his head toward the front of the room. Following his gaze, she saw Brother Matthew, standing with a man she didn’t know, arguing with Bishop Lambert.

  “But what has my lord bishop to fear from the testimony of this man?” the prior asked as Martine took her seat on the little central stool.

  The bishop gripped the arms of his throne, his rings flashing. “Did I say I feared your witness? You are most presumptuous, Brother.”

  “Then you’ll permit me to question him?”

  “Nay!” exclaimed Father Simon, jumping up from his bench. “‘Tis most irregular! I’ll not allow it!”

  “I see,” said Matthew. “Pardon me, my lord bishop. I didn’t realize I should be making my case to Father Simon.” Whispers and giggles broke out among the onlookers. “I’m just a simple monk, and I had no idea the authority to make this decision rested with—”

  “It doesn’t!” Lambert roared.

  Simon bowed obsequiously. “My lord bishop, I only meant—”

  “Take your seat, Father! And don’t ever think to question my authority again. If I want to hear from this witness, I’ll hear from him.” He waved a plump hand toward Brother Matthew. “Go ahead. But make it brief.”

  “Thank you, my lord bishop.” He turned to the man—tall, graying, and dressed in the dark robes of an academic—and said, “Are you not John Rankin of Oxford, doctor of medicine?”

  “I am he.”

  Matthew turned to the clerk. “Please note that Dr. Rankin is a physician and a teacher of the healing arts, that he received his medical education at Salerno and Paris, and that he enjoys a sterling reputation among his colleagues at the Studium Generale of Oxford. He has treated King Louis of France and King Henry of England, as well as many members of their royal houses.”

  To Rankin he said, “My first question involves the herbal tonics that Lady Falconer gave to Edmond of Harford and Lady Estrude of Flanders. Father Simon claims they were provided to her by Satan for the purpose of causing impotence and death. The lady herself maintains that in both cases, ‘twas naught but a surgical sleeping draft. Do you know of such a draft, and its properties?”

  The physician nodded. “There are several recipes for such drafts. Basically, they’re mixtures of various sedative herbs, and some are quite powerful. They can induce a very deep sleep with the right dose.”

  “Is there anything demonic about such drafts, anything supernatural?”

  Rankin chuckled. “Nay, Brother. They’re ordinary tonics, like any other. The medical community in Paris is well aware of them. I take it that’s where Lady Martine learned of hers.” Murmurs buzzed through the room; Father Simon scowled.

  “One other matter, Ma
ster Rankin,” Matthew continued. “Do you know of any way to revive a child who has drowned?”

  “Nay,” said Rankin, to Martine’s dismay. “Not if the child is truly dead. But if there’s a heartbeat, as I understand was the case with the child in question, and she isn’t dead, but merely appears so, then one can try breathing into her mouth...” His voice faded beneath the swell of exclamations from the onlookers. The bishop roared for silence, dismissed the witness, and called upon Father Simon to answer the physician’s statements.

  “My lord bishop,” said the priest, “Lady Falconer’s knowledge of the healing arts and herbal potions in no way explains the charge of ligature, or impotence, against her present husband, Lord Falconer. For at no time have we claimed that she carried out such sorcery by means of a potion.”

  “Then how did she induce this impotence?” asked the bishop. Although worded as a challenge, his slightly bored tone gave Martine the distinct impression that he already knew the answer. He and Father Simon had undoubtedly discussed these matters at length some time ago.

  Simon had his answer ready. “The clever witch can tie knots in a piece of string or leather and hide it, thus hindering the vital spirit from flowing to her victim’s generative organs. In addition, ‘tis well known that demons—even minor demons such as Lady Falconer’s companion—can be employed to instill in a man an aversion for a woman so extreme as to impede carnal copulation. ‘Twas undoubtedly this second method that Lady Falconer used on her lord husband.”

  Martine looked over her shoulder and saw Brother Matthew deep in whispered conversation with both Thorne and Geneva.

  Bishop Lambert adopted an expression of curiosity. “Why is that?”

  “Because by all accounts, the marriage in question is an unnatural union, devoid of affection of any kind—”