by Jill Barnett
Eleanor was quiet. She took a deep breath. “You are going to Torwick Castle with a few servants and a contingent of the de Clare men-at-arms.”
Sofia stood there, realization hitting her like a slap in the face. “Tobin is not going.”
Eleanor shook her head. “He is leaving on a mission for Edward.”
Sofia bit her lip and stared at her hands. She had not thought of this. She had not thought of the consequences of her actions, only the need to act.
“It is a devastating thing for a man to lose his honor, Sofia. In their minds it is perhaps the worst thing that can happen to them. Most would prefer death to loss of honor. It is even more devastating to a young man with Tobin’s pride.”
Sofia began to cry. “I love him, Eleanor. I only wanted to save his life. He could have been killed. I could not just sit there and do nothing. I could not watch my husband ride out to his death. I could not bear it!”
Eleanor sat down beside Sofia and put her arms around her and just let her cry. “I know, child. I know. Ours is not an easy life, we women who love our men. But sometimes when you love something, you have to understand it, deep inside. You have to understand what matters and sometimes, you have to let go.”
They rode over the crest of the hills around Torwick Castle a week later. Sofia had not been home for fifteen years. ’Twas odd how different it looked now. Not as huge and cold as she remembered.
She sat atop her mount and looked down at the lushly wooded valley, over freshly mown grass, and up the next rise, where Torwick stood, a gray stone keep and square walls that overlooked all of the river valley and forest below.
This was home. Her home. She did not know how she felt about that, whether it could ever be home to her. A chill ran down her arms and legs, gooseflesh and a numbness that had nothing to do with the number of hours she had spent in the saddle.
She did not know what awaited her there, at that castle in the distance. Memories or images? Or nothing but loneliness?
It did not matter because that was all she had now, without Tobin. So she took a deep breath and kicked her horse into a canter, heading to the home she did not know.
The main room and two of the old bedchambers, hers and her parents’, had been made ready. She moved through the rooms a few hours later, stopping and looking around, searching for something that would tell her this was home. She tried to remember anything she could from the past. She tried to see the faces of her mother, of her father.
But when she stood in those rooms, all she saw was a strange place where it felt as if she did not belong. Her belly was tight, as it had been for nearly a week, since the day she heard Tobin was sending her away.
She felt ill constantly, her food spent most of the day in her throat. Being at Torwick did not seem to help. Even the tray of soup and fresh bread that a maid brought to her did nothing to make her feel better.
She explored, out of desperation. She needed to find something familiar. Just one single thing. She walked down the stairs and along the dark hallways.
The stones on the floors were rough on her bare feet. She moved slowly because the rushlight would flicker if she walked too swiftly and sparks would fall from the rushes and burn the skin on her arms and hands.
The doors to the chapel were heavy. The hinges cried out like hungry infants when she pulled the doors open.
It smelled old inside. Like wet dirt and cobwebs. The dusty wooden benches were lined up the way she thought she remembered, in rows, one in front of another with room to kneel. Here at last was some kind of memory.
There were small arched windows behind the stone altar and some of the panes were cracked from where birds had flown into them. She let the doors close behind her, hardly heard them squeal and shut. She was looking at the altar, where the torch she carried cast wavering shadows that looked like spirits floating in the air.
She walked down the aisle and swiped back a falling cobweb, then moved onward, like a cipher, toward the raised stones that formed the base of the altar.
Here the rock was cut in huge slabs and lay at the edge of the altar. There were names carved into the stone. William. Matilda. Alice. John. Henry. Anne. Names of other Howards. She moved to the right, to a place where the stone was raised higher than the others, where a small but intricate rose and some other design she could not make out were engraved alongside the names of the two bodies that lay beneath.
ROSALYNDE THERESE HOWARD
&
Infant Son
Sofia stood there for the longest time, feeling something she could not name. She knelt down and touched the words with her fingertips, brushed off some of the dust and then she saw it: her mother’s profile cut into the stone.
With sudden revelation she recognized the nose, the chin and the brow. She could see her mother’s face. She could see her straight nose, her high cheeks, the fullness of her lips.
She could almost see the pale color of her skin. It was the color of Sofia’s. She could see the thick braid she had always wrapped over her head, and Sofia remembered watching her pin it there, watching the way the long silken sleeves of her gowns would fall when her mother raised her arms to secure the pins.
Sofia followed the lines with her fingertips, almost as if she were tracing her mother’s face. And in her mind’s eye she could see her mother turn and stare at her. She could see the smile she wore when she looked at her, and she could almost hear her voice.
“My angel. Come here. Sit on Mama’s lap and I shall tell you sweet tales of brave knights and lovely ladies. Come and smell my perfume and tell me if you think of roses.”
Sofia closed her eyes for a moment, because the memory was fading. “No,” she whispered. “No. Don’t go…. Please do not leave me.”
Then it was gone, the image.
She opened her eyes and looked down at the profile on the stone.
“Why did you leave?” she whispered the words, the same ones she carried in her mind for so long. “Why?”
She swallowed hard and looked up at the old cross that stood before the window and she called out, “Why God? Why did you take her from me? I needed her more than you could ever have. I needed her. I still need her.” Her voice echoed in the emptiness of the chapel, as if the walls were mocking her.
She slammed the heel of her fist against the stone. “Stop! Stop!” She hit it harder, over and over. “I need her! I need her! Don’t you understand! I need her . . . ”
Her voice cracked.
Tears fell onto her sore fists as she bowed her head and tried to catch a breath. But she couldn’t catch it. The sobs that were rising in her throat were stealing her breath away.
“Mother,” she whispered, head bent. “Mother.”
Her hair fell around her face, dark strands of it caught on her wet cheeks and into her mouth. She pushed the hair away and tasted the salt of her tears. “Please. Help me . . . Please. Please . . . ”
Then she lay down on the burial stone and cried. She cried for all she never had. She cried for all she never knew. She cried for all she had lost, hard, wracking sobs, until she cried with dry eyes and no more tears; and when she buried her burning face in her arms, the wild roses on the castle wall had lost all of their petals and the birds in the tall apple trees had flown far, far away.
Chapter 36
It had been four months since Sofia had first arrived at Torwick. Four long months with no word from Tobin. It was April now, and as she looked out on the hills before her, there were bright yellow primroses blooming in the grasses, and from this far away they looked like little bees.
The hedgerows along the river below the castle were beginning to live again, their myrtle leaves turning glossy and deep green. Woodbines and the elder trees had fat buds and the rabbits and harts were out in the dewy mornings, nibbling on periwinkles and dandelions.
She stood at the window that looked over the valley. The same window where she watched for her father to come home. The same window where she now watched,
secretly hoping for something she knew she would not see—Tobin riding over the hill.
She left the window and went down the stairs, heading outside, because she needed the air in the mornings. She was carrying their child. She knew that, and also knew that she probably had been carrying on the day of the challenge. She could imagine what Tobin would have done had he known that. But she would not tell him of the babe. She would not. If he came back to her, she wanted him to come back for her, not because he felt he must
The longer she was there at Torwick, the more she remembered. It was almost as if a door to her past had been unlocked the night she cried on the floor in the chapel, the night she found the etching of her mother’s profile.
Now that the weather was warmer, she would sit in the castle garden, which she had weeded and planted and worked on incessantly during those first few months at Torwick, those months when the loneliness was almost too much to bear, those months when the nights were cold and empty.
Now it was different when she went into the gardens. She took long walks in the new sunshine, because it made her feel less alone and more alive. But the babe did that, too. For she had just begun to feel flutters in the morning, just once or twice, like a small butterfly was deep inside her belly.
She sat on the garden bench and remembered. Here she had played in the mud as her mother sat on a stone bench, that very bench she was sitting on now, her hands clasped across her distended belly as if she had to protect the babe inside before it was even born. It was here that at barely four years, Sofia had felt the babe in her mother’s belly move, her hand under her mother’s and her mother’s soft look of love and wonder. She hadn’t even cared that Sofia’s fingers were muddy or that she left small handprints on her favorite silk gown.
It seemed somehow right, in order with the world, that she should feel her own babe as she sat on that bench in the sunshine. She turned her face toward the sun and leaned back. Her belly cramped sharply and she gasped, then clutched herself, waiting for it to pass.
It didn’t. The pain grew sharper and she began to cry.
“No . . . no . . . please no . . . ”
Then she looked down to see blood soaking through her gown and a moment later she fainted.
Merrick rode over the low hills of Dover, heading for a castle on the edge of a chalky cliff, where de Clare was waiting for a message to cross the channel by ship, a decision between Edward and the King of France.
Merrick arrived with a blast of cooler wind from the channel. He dismounted and wrapped his cape more tightly around him as he crossed the courtyard and followed the servant who took him to Tobin.
Merrick burst into the room.
Tobin turned. “Merrick! You are a sight.” He crossed over and clasped him by the shoulders, shaking him in greeting.
From the expression on his face, Merrick would believe that Tobin was not doing well alone, sitting here, waiting for something that could take forever.
“I have news,” Merrick said, getting directly to the point.
“Good, good. I have heard little stuck away like this. So tell me. What is this news?”
“You are going to be a father.”
Tobin stared at him for a long, long time, before it hit him. He cursed under his breath and stood, then walked away for a moment, his back to Merrick.
“There is more.”
“What?”
“Sofia has been bleeding.”
Tobin spun around. “What?”
Merrick raised his hand. “She is fine and so is the babe, but she is in bed and must stay there. Whenever she rises she bleeds. Clio and the Queen have seen her. She has been examined by midwives and the royal physicians. They believe she can carry the babe, but she must stay in bed.”
Tobin said nothing. His back was still to Merrick.
“You need to go home, lad. You need to toss your damaged pride into that bloody wind outside and ride to your wife.”
Tobin still did not turn around. He stood there, his back straight, silent. After a long moment he said, “I will go. Now.”
“Good.” Merrick nodded, but he still watched his friend, the young man who was like a younger brother to him. “Shall I wait?”
Tobin nodded. He took a few deep breaths, then he said, “Give me a moment. Will you? I think I have something in my eye.”
Sofia lay in the silvery dark, her hands clasped over her belly. A half moon cast shadows and light into the room, enough for Sofia to see.
The cramping was not as often now, just small twinges. She took deep, long breaths, because she could almost feel inside her body when she did so.
Her hands suddenly moved, jumped, from a tap hard against her belly. She stared at it, moved her hands and watched for what seemed like forever.
It happened again. Then again.
She laughed out loud. Watching it, she placed her hand over the spot. “Was that a foot or a hand?”
It bulged again.
She smiled. “A foot, I think.” She took another deep breath and sighed. “Oh, child of mine, I want you more than God could even know.”
Merrick and Tobin had stopped at a tavern to feed and water their mounts. They were inside, finishing off a leg of mutton and tankards of dark, frothy ale.
Merrick lifted his tankard to his mouth and took a long drink. He swallowed, then stared into the ale. “’Tis not the same as Clio’s brew.”
“Aye,” Tobin agreed. “’Twill not make you laugh for no reason or spout words in rhyme.”
Merrick laughed.
They both sat like that, each lost in thought, neither saying a word.
Finally Tobin looked at him. The younger man seemed nervous and edgy.
“What?” Merrick asked, knowing that with de Clare sometimes you had to pry things from him.
“You love your lady wife.”
Merrick smiled softly. “Aye.”
“My father thinks he loves women. I do not understand the difference.”
“That is because you are trying so hard not to be like him that you cannot see what I think you already know inside.” Merrick gave him an honest and direct look. “You won’t let yourself feel anything. But you do. You cannot stop feeling.”
Tobin stared into his empty tankard. “How do you know if you love a woman?”
Merrick thought long and hard about how he could put what he felt for Clio into words.
“You cannot tell me.” Tobin sounded miserable.
“That is not it. I am thinking. Give me a moment.” Finally Merrick looked up at him. “This is not an easy thing to admit.”
Tobin nodded.
Merrick took a deep breath. “I know because I want to hold her. I want to love her. Because I can’t stop thinking about her, even now, years after we’ve been married. I cannot imagine what my life would be without her in it When I make love to her, it’s still the most wonderful feeling in the world. It’s something I cannot describe.” He paused, then added, “And when I look at her, when I stare into those wide eyes of hers, I see my children there. The children we have and the children of our future.”
Merrick looked at Tobin, whose expression was deeply pensive. “Do you understand?”
“Aye.” Tobin nodded. “I understand all too well.”
Chapter 37
Sofia looked at her husband, at the face she dreamed about every night, and she lay there feeling as if her heart had been ripped from her chest.
“You came back because of the babe.” Her voice was flat, which she was grateful for, then he would not know how very much that hurt her.
He stood by her bed. “Aye.” Then he frowned and shook his head. “That is not true. I did, but I did not.”
She gave a sharp and bitter laugh. “You had better make up your mind.”
“I know my mind.”
“Well now, that is a first. Coming from the man who has left me . . . ” She tapped a finger against her lips. “Two, no three times. Or is it four?”
“Sofia.”<
br />
“Oh, good. You remember my name. That will be helpful in case our child asks.”
He swore and began to pace the way he always did, driving a hand through his dark hair when he turned. Watching him walk the room again almost made her start to cry. She could not help her bitter words. She could not help making him pay a little now for the hurt his abandonment had caused her.
She had made a mistake. To fight his challenge was a mistake. Prideful and silly and not worth the pain it caused. She knew that now. But to not have him with her, to have him run away from her or send her away like he had was a severe punishment. The pain of it ran deep.
“I am not back for the child alone.”
She looked at him, at the true look in his eyes and she was frightened. She glanced at the window, the one she waited at for so long and for two men. The truth was: men left you.
“I came back for you, Sofia.” There were the words she wanted.
Too late.
She could not take the chance again. She was afraid. She could not let him back into her life just so he could leave when things did not go as he liked.
She looked at him and felt the tears she knew so well burn the backs of her eyes. Her throat grew tight and her chest heavy. She turned away and stared at the wall. “Go away, Tobin. Just go away.”
It only took Tobin two days to figure out her tactic. She used the servants against him.
He was not allowed in her room.
She refused to see him. She refused to talk to him.
He had even stood there and shouted through the door. It did no good.
So he took action. He sent everyone away. He paid the servants double a year’s wages and told them not to come back until Michaelmas, when the babe was due. He paid off the cook, kept only one kitchen helper who could bake as well as put together a decent, but light fare. He sent some of his men-at-arms home, and kept only the men he needed to guard the gates and the castle walls. He removed every obstacle except her bedchamber door, and now he even had the key to that.
He came up the long flight of stairs, balancing a tray on his arm. It was filled with soup and bread and milk, which she was supposed to have according to what he’d been told. He had memorized her diet and meals, the same way he would memorize a map or battle plan. Her schedule was the same as the changing of his guards. He had learnt Sofia’s routine.