Wings of the Storm

by Susan Sizemore

  teenager. Whatever fate might bring to her here, at least she didn't have to worry about the mouth problems that were such a plague to the natives.

  She forgot about her teeth as Bertram approached her, looking as if he were ready to shoo her into the cellar. Instead, the first thing he said was, "The cook needs to speak with you about the fish pond." "Fish pond?"

  "He's insisting on Lenten fare whether we have mass or no."

  Jane hurried to cross herself. Sometimes she forgot she was supposed to be seeking life in a religious order. "Quite right," she approved. "What else?"

  "Alfred says you promised him men to help rebuild the dovecote. Cerdic says he has too few men to help with the planting as it is, and won't send any more."

  "Hmm. I thought Wat and Oswy were going to help him."

  "They're working on the stable roof this morning," he explained.

  She understood Alfred's impatience to get the work done. Hawks had been getting at the pigeons, and they were an important source of meat for the castle table. "I had better talk to Cerdic." Anything to stay out of the cellar a while longer. "Where's Sir Stephan?" She wanted to say a few words to her liege lord as well.

  "In the stable."

  Where else? "I'll be back soon."

  Bertram cleared his throat and gave her a chilly once-over. The gesture reminded her that she was only partially dressed. She hurried upstairs. Berthild had left on the tasks she'd set for her. Jane pulled out one of her three canvas bags. First she gobbled down a handful of dried fruit, then she brought out her second overdress. This one was black, decorated in blue and gray. She pulled it on and wrapped her belt around a waist that was a touch narrower than it had been a week before. She added the lightweight cloak Bertram had rummaged from Stephan's late mother's clothes chest for her. Then she headed for Passfair village.

  It was midmoming before she settled matters to the satisfaction of both the reeve and the pigeon keeper. She entered the courtyard with a keen feeling of satisfaction at a job well done. A warm sun was casting butter-cream light across the landscape. She'd noticed the beginning of buds on the trees in the apple orchard on her way back up the hill. The birds were trilling overhead, and her face wasn't hurting quite so badly as the day before.

  Now she wanted to talk to Stephan. She was hoping she might be able diplomatically to suggest he try to get to know the girl he was going to marry. She wanted to point out to him that domestic harmony between them would be good for the whole Passfair household. With gentle words ready to trip from her tongue, she went to the stable.

  Raoul DeCorte was waiting for her at the stable door. "My lady," he said, looking at her nervously. "I have a message for you."

  The boys working on the stable roof began hammering loudly with heavy wooden mallets. She drew him aside so she could hear without either of them having to shout. As they walked together toward the hall she said, "Yes?" There was a knot in her stomach telling her she already knew what the guard sergeant was going to say.

  "Sir Stephan said to tell you he felt compelled to renew his vows of service to his liege. His conscience bade him to journey to Striguil. Or wherever Lord Guillaume might be holding winter court."

  Her brows knit in a thunderous frown. "He slunk off while I was gone, you mean?"

  "Just so, my lady," Raoul agreed with a devilish smile. "You're one to cut to the heart of a matter. The lad's fled the maiden."

  "Leaving me to take care of her." She made the unladylike gesture of banging her fist into her palm. Wait until I get my hands on you, Stephan DuVrai!

  Guillaume le Marechal was one of the richest landholders in England. He could be at any of his vast estates, which covered the length and breadth of the country. Stephan could spend weeks dawdling his way from one holding to the next.

  That rat! she growled to herself. Running off just because he didn't want to face the girl he was going to marry. To DeCorte she posed a more practical concern. "How many men did he take?"

  "Ten, my lady. He left enough to hold the castle in case of trouble."

  "Will there be? Trouble, I mean? Will Hugh of Lilydrake try to snatch Sibelle again?"

  The sergeant shook his head. "That game's won. Lilydrake will think her bedded and already with child by the time he hears the lad's gone. And Sir Stephan said he trusts Daffyd ap Bleddyn to keep the countryside safe."

  The devil with Daffyd ap Bleddyn! Daffyd ap Bleddyn keeping the countryside safe wasn't going to help her keep peace inside the walls of Passfair, she fumed. "Does Lady Sibelle know he's gone?"

  He drew himself up to his full height. She was still a good six inches taller. "I don't concern myself with matters in the ladies' bower," he informed her. Then he quickly took himself off to the armory.

  "Right," she railed at his retreating back. "Another coward leaving me to do all the work!"

  She sighed. It was both an angry and a frustrated sound. She suddenly felt as if the weight of the world were being dumped on her. The morning had gone so well. She'd almost been starting to enjoy this forced exile. Now she had to face .Sibelle with the news—and cope with the girl through all the days until Sir Stephan chose to put in another appearance at his castle.

  "Face it, girl," she chided herself. "You are very much alone, and it's never going to get any better."

  The bright, sunny day was suddenly cold and dark for her. She sighed again and went into the castle. Bertram was waiting just inside the screen to let her know Lady Sibelle hadn't ventured out of the bedchamber. Her women had informed him she didn't intend to. "About the cellar, my lady?"

  His news sent Jane marching up the tower stairs.

  Her knock on the stout bower door was eventually answered. It was the shorter and rounder of the two dragons who opened the door, but she only cracked it a few inches.

  She looked as if she'd tasted something nasty when she caught sight of Jane. "What do you want?" she demanded haughtily.

  Jane considered pushing her way in. Instead she offered a patient smile and said, "I have to talk to your mistress."

  "She won't speak to you." The door began to close.

  Jane already had a foot stuck in the opening. She added a hand pushing against the outside of the door for good measure. "I have news about Sir Stephan."

  "Then give it to me," the woman snapped.

  "You're not his betrothed. Let me in." Jane didn't know why she was being so insistent about a confrontation she didn't want in the first place. Sense of duty or something, she guessed. She thought about the girl having cried herself to sleep the night before. Maybe what she was feeling was a little compassion for Sibelle's untenable situation.

  "Who is it?" she heard a young female voice asking from inside the room.

  So the kid could talk, Jane thought as the servant turned her head to answer. "That woman, my lamb." "I don't want to talk to her!" came the shrill reply. "Perhaps you'd best, my dove," she heard the other attendant coax soothingly.

  "No! She's an ugly giant, and I won't have her near me!"

  "Forget this nonsense," Jane fumed. She gave an irritated shove on the door. The woman trying to hold it against her was knocked aside. Jane strode in angrily.

  Sibelle jumped up from a bench as Jane approached her, and pointed a pudgy forefinger dramatically at the door. "Cast her out!" she ordered her women.

  Jane gave them a challenging look. The women backed to the far side of the room. Jane stalked forward and planted herself squarely in front of Lady Sibelle. "My lady," she said in crisply enunciated tones. "I am the chatelaine of this castle. It is my duty to care for you. I wish to make your life here as pleasant as possible. Now, if you ju—"

  "Where's Sir Stephan?" the girl interrupted. "Why doesn't he come to me? I want you to go away." She crossed her arms over her full breasts and added imperiously, "Now."

  "We have to talk first," Jane continued doggedly.

  "I'm to be his lady," Sibelle told her. "I don't have to talk to his leman." Jane gasped at being called Step
han's mistress. "I don't want you here," Sibelle continued. "Go away. Marguerite, make her go away."

  "Lady Jehane," ventured the more reasonable of the two attendants. "Perhaps you should go. Perhaps Sir Stephan will come and speak with our la—"

  "He's not here," Jane cut in. She kept a steady gaze on Sibelle as she explained, "I'm not his mistress."

  "You are!" the girl declared. "He beat you so you wouldn't complain about his marrying me. Soon he's going to throw you to his guards and then I'll—"

  "It was the dog," Jane explained once more, through clenched teeth this time. "The dog tripped me and I fell down the stairs. No one beat me. Sit down," she ordered the girl, her tone so full of authority that it would have made her military mother proud.

  The girl sat. And began sniffling.

  Jane had to concede the girl had quite an active imagination. "Sir Stephan wouldn't beat anyone," she defended him loyally. "He's a chivalrous young knight."

  Her words calmed Sibelle a bit. The girl gave a romantic sigh. "He's the handsomest man I've ever seen."

  Jane doubted that Sibelle had seen that many, but a

  few days ago she might have agreed with the girl. Now, for some reason, she found herself mentally comparing Stephan's slender good looks with the lionlike masculinity of Sir Daffyd. "One of the handsomest," she agreed.

  "He shall be mine."

  "Of course, my lady," she soothed. "I am not his mistress. I have never been his mistress. I will never be his mistress. I'm a widowed kinswoman from the Holy Land." Suddenly all three of the other women were looking at her in bug-eyed awe. They crossed themselves in unison.

  She went on. "As soon as the Church returns to England, I will enter a convent and spend the rest of my life in prayer." There, she added silently, was that a good enough explanation? "I swear by Saint—uh— Bernard."

  "Bernard?"

  "Hasn't he been canonized yet?" Damn. "We heard so in Jerusalem. Saint George, then. And the Holy Sepulcher," she threw in for good measure. "Where my dear husband and I often prayed before the paynim overran the Holy City."

  Sibelle's fair skin blushed hot pink. "Oh," she said. She looked at her servants. "You said she was hi—"

  "They were wrong." Jane gave the older women a dirty look. "And we don't encourage gossiping here at Passfair," she added warningly. So there.

  "But where is Sir Stephan?" Sibelle asked, drawing Jane's attention back to the subject she'd come to discuss.

  "Sir Stephan's been called away."

  Fresh tears began to trickle down Sibelle's cheeks.

  "Oh." Her lower lip quivered miserably. "When will he return?"

  "I don't know. He has to serve his liege for a time."

  "He's very brave."

  "Yes."

  With a romantic sigh, Sibelle folded her hands in her lap. "Then I will wait for him."

  Jane was relieved at how well the girl was taking it. Of course, she was probably used to waiting. It was what women did while the menfolk were off bashing each other's heads in.

  She wanted to say something reassuring about how things would be better when Stephan returned. She was probably wrong, but she felt the urge to give the girl some comfort.

  As she opened her mouth to tell some placating lie, one of the stable lads rushed into the bower shouting, "Lady Jehane, come quickly! It's Oswy! He's fallen from the roof!"

  The smell of dung hung about the boy like a cloud. His face was pale under a thick layer of dirt. Jane stared at him, speechless for the moment.

  "Come to the stable, my lady. Now. Please!" he urged. He ran back out the door.

  "What's happened?" she asked, following quickly to catch up as he raced down the two flights of stairs. Her heart was pounding with fear as they rushed across the hall. She'd seen the look of horror in the boy's face. "How bad?"

  It wasn't a high roof. How bad could it—

  "His back's all twisted."

  A broken spine.

  "Oh, my God." She grabbed the boy by the shoulder. "Go for Switha. Send her to me at the . . ." She

  thought swiftly, quickly latching on to a place both clean and quiet. "At the chapel."

  The boy hurried off toward the village. Jane lifted her skirts and sprinted toward the stable.

  8

  This was her fault, fane thought as she leaned tiredly against the cool stones of the chapel wall. She didn't know how much time had passed since she'd reached the stable. There she'd found the small, silent crowd gathered around the lad lying in a pitiful, twisted heap in the mixed mud and straw of the paddock. She knelt beside the boy, wishing she knew something about first aid, as the lad who'd been working with Oswy on the roof babbled out an explanation. She didn't hear a word he said. Someone, it must have been she, gave the stablemen and guards surrounding the boy orders. She remembered her hands moving, her muscles straining, as she helped the men ease Oswy onto the wide board the cook brought from the kitchen. She remembered holding Oswy's cold hand as the board was carried gently into the chapel and eased onto the floor. She must have said something to send the men away, then she waited alone for Switha.

  She did remember the boy sometimes groaning, and that she had wiped away the blood bubbling slowly

  from his lips. Her hands were sticky with it still. When Switha came she'd walked over here to the wall where she now stood.

  It was her fault, she thought again while she watched the wisewoman's sure hands work their way down the boy's paralyzed body. If she had just left things alone. If she hadn't wanted to make everything perfect, he wouldn't have been up on that roof. He wouldn't have slipped. He wouldn't have fallen. He wouldn't have hit the watering trough and landed on the ground with God knew how many internal injuries and broken vertebrae.

  There was nothing to be done. She couldn't pick up a phone and call 911. No evac helicopter was going to land and whisk him off to intensive care. He was going to die. It was going to take a long time, and it was going to hurt.

  "It's all my fault," she said aloud.

  She hadn't noticed anyone else in the room, but a girl's voice beside her answered softly, "No. It's God's will."

  Jane turned her head and found herself looking into Lady Sibelle's eyes. They were a soft blue gray. For once there were no tears in them. Jane didn't understand. "What are you doing here?"

  "Praying," the girl answered. "I followed you from the bower. I tried to stay out of the way." She bent her head. "I came to do the only thing I know how to do. It's our duty to pray for the dying."

  Jane couldn't think of anything to say in answer, so she pried herself away from the wall and walked to where Switha was examining the boy. The chapel was small, a boxy little room off the main hall. A cross-shaped window above the roughly smoothed granite slab used as an altar let in plenty of light. A small room, but the distance across it seemed very long to Jane. She was light-headed and felt as if she were walking down an echoing tunnel. Sibelle followed close on her heels.

  Switha rose as they came to her. Sibelle knelt in her place. Jane didn't bother with foolish questions. She asked, "Can you give him anything for the pain?"

  Switha shook her head. Her expression was grave and still; anguish showed only in her eyes. There was blood on her hands as well. Jane recalled that a plague had taken many villagers' lives that winter. Switha must have had her fill of death by now. How many had she lost in childbirth? To simple infections? To stupid accidents like today's? Never mind the unheeded peasant deaths when the nobles fought out their petty squabbles, using the countryside as though it were a playing field.

  "I'm so sorry," Jane told her. She apologized not just for Oswy, but for all of history where the poor and powerless died without any help.

  Switha acknowledged her understanding with the slightest of nods. Then the Saxon woman knelt beside the Norman girl. Sibelle was cradling Oswy's head in her ample lap. Switha put a hand on the girl's shoulder. "My lady?"

  Sibelle looked up at Jane. "I'll take the death-watch," she to
ld her. "Send Marguerite and Alais to me."

  "I'll stay as well," Switha said. "There's nothing we can do but wait for his spirit to leave his body."

  "If only we could have a priest here for the last rites," Sibelle added sadly. "Poor lost soul."

  Switha placed a comforting hand on Sibelle's

  shoulder. "We will pray. To the Lord, and the Lady Mother."

  Jane watched them exchange a quick, understanding glance. "Each in their own way," Sibelle agreed.

  It was the only thing left to do. Jane said, "I'll be back."

  But when she had walked stiffly from the chapel, she realized she wasn't sure she could go back. She marveled at the women she'd left behind. She had thought Sibelle was just a fat, snivelly kid, she reflected in confusion. Maybe there was more to her. Obviously there was.

  She found the serving women by the hearth and sent them to the chapel, then stayed by the fire herself, trying to get some warmth into her chilled bones. A few minutes later Marguerite and Alais came back into the hall again. They stopped Bertram, and after a short conversation oil lamps and linens and various other things were gathered and carried back into the chapel. Jane watched the activity with numb detachment. It all seemed well practiced, so commonplace. She'd thought she'd understood the reality of this era. Now she was beginning to realize she didn't know anything.

  She didn't return to the chapel. She sat on the dais step with her hands propping up her chin, staring at the glowing embers in the hearth for hours instead. She sensed Bertram hovering nearby, but he left her alone.

  She didn't let anything disturb her until Sir Daffyd entered the hall, his spurs and mail jangling with the rhythm of his stride. She rubbed her aching temples and stood, wondering irritably what the devil he was doing here.

  He came and took her by the arm and led her to one of the carved chairs. He had beautiful hands; they covered hers comfortingly for a moment. "You don't look well."