by Liz Lyles
“What?”
“I can’t tell you here. It’s not safe.”
“Don’t be silly!” She smiled tentatively but he didn’t smile back. “I will then, but give me a few minutes. I want to see about a drink for my head. Mary has something in her herbs that help.”
She returned to the tower a quarter of an hour later and looked for her cousin on the parapet. He stood at the balustrade, leaning over the stone railing. “What is it then that is so secret?” she asked, glad she had worn her cloak.
He glanced behind him, taking precautions against being overheard. “I wanted to warn you, Cordy. My father has made plans.”
“For?” But her heart pounded harder as if she already knew.
“Your betrothal.”
She sat down at the base of the wall, drawing her skirts around her knees. “Are you sure?”
He sat down beside her, his long slim poet’s fingers wrapping the hem of her gown about them. The fabric slipped through his fingers, cool, slick. He was afraid, and it had nothing to do with him. “I heard my father speaking of it last night to Mary. And a letter went out with a page today.”
“A letter to whom?”
“The Duke of Galicia.”
She was silent for a moment, absorbing the news. “Galicia. You mean in Castile?” He nodded. “Does that mean I am to marry him?” she asked.
“I think so, but I may be wrong. Perhaps it only has to do with Father’s trade.”
She could tell that he was nervous. “What do you know of him?”
“Not much,” he said. She stared at him hard. “And that he is thought by many to be more powerful than Castile’s Regent. The real power in Castile isn’t with the crowns, but the different kingdoms. And Galicia is reportedly unsafe for business or travel. Most people—including the Regent—ignore the Duke Fernando’s heavy-handed rule.” He ducked his head. “It isn’t the place I would want to see you go.”
“I can’t believe it,” she whispered.
“Maybe it won’t be for years—” He broke off, hearing footsteps. “Hush, Cordy!” He listened to the voices coming from the stairwell. “Do you hear?”
She nodded. “Your father,” she said, grabbing his hand. “Should we make ourselves known?”
“No, let us wait. Perhaps he shall pass on. I don’t want to face him now.” They knelt down and crept low around the edge of the tower, too far from the stairs to make a run for it, too near the balustrade to make a sound.
The voices overtook them, the Earl’s tone distinctly furious. “What kind of fool are you? Never, ever, were you to have returned here.”
“No one knows me. I was a lad when I left.”
“But to risk coming back!”
“The money is gone. We must have more. My pa is in bad shape. He was wounded in the attack those years ago.”
The Earl laughed, his tone contemptuous. “More? I have given all I will give. What makes you think I shall hand over more?”
The peasant voice lowered. “You wouldn’t want it to be known that you were a murderer, now would you?”
“I? A murderer? I murdered no one. You and your father, you were the ones. No blood was shed by my hand.”
“Now listen to me—” The peasant’s tone became menacing. “—We killed him like you said, and didn’t harm the girl. But the falconer had a wolf with him—” Cordaella reached out to grasp Philip’s hand. “It bit my dad. The old man can’t walk anymore and I have to take care of the both of us. You have plenty of money. All I’m asking for is a fair share. A couple of florins wouldn’t hurt you any.”
Philip had to restrain Cordaella; she was on her knees, desperate to get up, to get even. She heard the Earl answer the peasant, “It’s the principle of it.”
“What?” the man asked.
“I hired your father to take care of a job. He botched the assignment, not I. Why should I pay for his mistake?” The Earl’s tone changed abruptly. “Now go, and never, ever return. If I see you again I shall have my cooks prepare you for dinner.”
“Your threats don’t frighten me—”
“No?” The Earl’s voice was swallowed by the scrape of metal. Cordaella stiffened, reeling forward, Philip barely able to catch her before she slumped against the stones. “Then perhaps this will!” Eton answered as metal clanked against the parapet and the man shrieked, falling backward. “Help! Help, God, help!” the peasant cried, his voice spiraling faintly into the morning mist.
“Enough!” Eton pulled his sword free and swiftly drew it across the other’s neck. The peasant lay still. “God damn whore,” he muttered softly, wiping the blade off on his cloak. “Whores, all of them.” His footsteps receded, taking him down the second tower’s stairs.
Philip would have jumped to his feet, but Cordaella was vomiting against the balustrade. He tried to shield her from the body of the peasant, the throat slit, a pool of blood spreading towards them. “Come, Cordy, we must get out of here.” She stared at him in horror, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “We must,” he insisted. “The guards will be back. Father mustn’t find you anywhere near here.” He pushed her to the head of the stairs. “Hurry!”
He was pulling her down the stairs, and she tripped, falling helplessly against him. Everything blurred, tears blinding her. She felt as if she was going to be sick again, and it took all of her control not to be ill on the stairs.
Philip pushed her into her bedchamber and shut the door. Cordaella stood in the middle of the floor, clasped her arms around her, and cried. The terror relived itself again and she was sure she would always picture her father bleeding. Red, red, it stained her hands, her skirt, the floor. The Earl had killed her father. Even as he killed the man on the tower.
She lifted her hands, imagining them covered in blood. The Earl made it look so easy…killing. Could she kill a man? Would she be able to do such a thing? She stared at her palms, and they looked too narrow, too white.
No, she couldn’t kill the Earl, she didn’t have the physical strength or murder in her heart. She turned her hands over and finally hid them behind her back. There must be another way; she knew there was always more than one solution. She would make him pay. Somehow. Someday.
CHAPTER SIX
‡
It would come back to her, the scene on the parapet, and she would be struck mute standing lost, silent, as she listened to the voices playing in her head, hearing again the peasant’s accusations, the Earl’s contempt, the screaming. She wondered how many others Eton had murdered. And none of it seemed significant to him because all who had died were common, peasants. Dirt.
For years she had wondered what happened, there in the snow of Ben Nevis. Now she knew the truth and did knowing change anything?
Autumn was passing quickly. She thought ahead to November and December, before long it would be St. Nichol’s and then the twelve days of Christmas—. When she first arrived at Peveril she had been surprised by the numerous Yule festivities: costumes and singing, dancing and gift-giving. The Nativity, on December’s twenty-fifth, had been barely noticed in Glen Nevis, her father and she too poor, too busy to make up costumes and masks. Yet those Yule celebrations had been mystical, green pine branches draped across the door, tucked under eaves and into shutters. Outside it was cold, silent, white. Inside the fire glowed, the fragrance of pine filled the air and the sticky gold sap dripping from the boughs formed puddles on the floor. It had seemed lovely to her, beauty in the simplicity of the rough wood toys and the green garlands on the brown walls.
Cordaella stood on tiptoe, reaching up high to lift the garland off of the Earl’s bedchamber wall. The dried herb and flower wreath was replaced with another. She stepped off the stool, careful not to crush the brittle wreath under her arm. The bedchamber door opened and Eton walked in. “Mary,” he said, “where is my—” breaking off when he saw Cordaella instead of his wife. “What are you doing here?”
“Lady Eton asked me to change all garlands with the ones we made dur
ing the summer.”
He seemed to be examining her, the same inspection he gave his best horses. “You are almost sixteen, aren’t you?”
“Yes, my lord. In November.”
“One month,” he said, still considering her. “And you stay busy enough.”
“Yes, my lord.” She wiped dust off her cheek, aware of her old stained surcoat and her hair loosening from the braid. She hadn’t expected to see him this morning. He was supposed to be with the bailiff and his scribes in the solar, hearing complaints from the villagers and settling disputes.
“You are spending more time helping her ladyship?”
Of course she was, she thought, he had ordered it, saying that she was too old for lessons and games. “Yes, my lord,” she answered instead, keeping her gaze down, fixed on the floorboards between them.
“You will need to know how to run the affairs of a lord.” He turned to rummage in a trunk at the foot of the bed. “You weren’t brought up with responsibilities, living like a banshee in those mountains, and you need to work hard here, to learn a lady’s duty.” She was glad he couldn’t see how much she hated him. She had learned to hide the loathing and anger behind vacant eyes and an empty expression. He slammed the trunk lid down with a curse. “Damn all! I cannot find my riding cloak, the brown one, with the fur hood.”
She watched him turn around in his chamber. He looked helpless then, so small, almost lost. She wanted to laugh at him. She wanted to challenge him…to challenge his greed, his selfishness, his cruelty. Instead she swallowed, saying only, “Lady Eton is mending it. She and Elisabeth are sewing in the nursery.”
“Then go fetch it for me,” he said with a trace of impatience as he walked to the chamber door. “I will wait in the solar.”
The solar, the room where he meted out all discipline with the low stool and the switch. How appropriate, she thought, climbing the narrow twisting stairs for the nursery. She would forever associate him with his fist. She wasn’t even sixteen yet and she already knew that this was one of the ways men made women obey.
*
Even if the Earl hadn’t said anything, it was clear that Cordaella was being prepared for marriage. She now spent every afternoon in the kitchen, learning from the cook and the steward. They instructed her in cooking and recordkeeping, in planning a supper for twelve and a banquet for two hundred. She was taught the difference between sauces, how seasonings should be used, which fish to serve first, and the order of courses when there would be more than seven.
Mr. Russell, the head steward, sat her on a high stool in his cramped office, which was really only a corner of the scullery, teaching her how to record purchases and profits “There are columns for stags taken from the woods,” he said, flipping several pages, “and tallies for the birds—quail and pheasant, duck. But chickens go under a different column.” He also showed her how he kept record of the silver serving pieces, and how the scullion reported to him on the number and condition of plates and dishes.
The head cook, Mrs. Smith, who traveled from Buxton village every day, whispered that the young girls were often lazy and in need of constant watch. She told Cordaella that the head cook must make sure all vegetables were fresh and that the dairy produced sufficient milk for butter and cheeses. “You will have girls for every task,” Mrs. Smith explained, “and they should stay with the one task in order to know it well. Don’t let them jump from task to task or else they’ll always be pestering with questions and making mistakes, costing time and patience, and God knows, we’ve never enough of that in here.”
Cordaella followed Lady Eton through the Great Hall and corridors as the Earl’s wife detailed finer points to household staff: more oil polish for the paneling, fresh whitewash on the small solar’s plaster, hearthstones regularly scrubbed with soap and water. And gradually Cordaella knew what needed to be done, tending to the washing of the linens on her own, stuffing the mattresses with clean straw, plumping pillows with down and stitching the seams closed again. She felt more sure of herself, the muscles in her arms taking shape as she swept and scrubbed, cooked, stirred, chopped, and helped carry wood. There was little time now for play or talk, and it wasn’t until evening, when all retired for the night that Cordaella would relax, pulling a book from her trunk, grateful that Philip still loaned her his. Sometimes she would read a book four or five times until he would finally get another.
The last several nights she had been reading about men and women and it made her think of the Duke Fernando. She wondered if she would really be betrothed to him. Philip said so little about it lately that she thought perhaps the talks had ended. Maybe the Earl was considering a proposal from someone else.
It didn’t frighten her anymore…the talk of marriage. She didn’t have much choice anyway. Of course she would have to marry. It was her duty. Her responsibility. She smiled as she turned a page in her book, glancing briefly in Elisabeth’s direction. Elisabeth was sleeping; her face was buried in the pillow. The glow of the fire lit the creamy pages of Cordaella’s novel and even though it was late, easily an hour past midnight, she couldn’t put the book down. Philip had loaned her his copy of Boccaccio’s The Decameron, a novel written in Italian that took considerable effort to read. Italian was enough like Latin that she could make guesses at unfamiliar words, but that wasn’t the reason she was so fascinated by the book.
At least some of the tales in the The Decameron were about men and women and things they did to each other for pleasure. Cordaella turned a page, her gaze racing down the paragraph. She squirmed at the depiction of nuns and holy men, young girls and eager men. There was something dark about the writings, something sordid, but the very same sordidness made her mouth dry and her belly tighten. Is this what men and ladies did, this groping beneath robes, this riding?
She read slowly now, beginning a new tale, “Second Day, Seventh Story.” Her Italian was terrible but she was still able to understand the direction the story was taking, particularly the paragraph about robust Pericone stripping off his clothes and getting into bed with beautiful Alatiel, the daughter of the sultan of Babylon. She reread the description of how with Alatiel he gave her “the horn men use to butt”, and how Alatiel repented, rejecting Pericone’s earlier advances because she found she liked his presence in bed very much.
“Cordy,” Elisabeth said, turning her head towards the fire, her dark blonde hair matted and her cheeks flushed from sleep, “when are you going to sleep?”
“Soon,” Cordaella promised.
“But you’ve been reading for hours. And the fire is too bright for me to sleep well. Can you not wait to read until the morning?”
Cordaella closed the book and scrambled to her feet, her hair loose down her back, the long black tresses inky in the firelight. She gathered her blanket and pillow and hurried to bed, the wood floor cold beneath her bare feet. Slipping between the covers, she pulled out the stones that the housemaid had placed earlier between the sheets. The stones had lost their heat and the sheets were stiff. Cordaella lay in bed with her eyes closed. She wasn’t in the slightest bit sleepy. All she could think of was the novel and the stories of men and women pleasuring each other. She had never thought of it that way, never considered that bodies could be anything but ugly and meant for covering. Timidly she reached under the bodice of her chemise and touched her breast, her fingers tracing the shape of her nipple. The nipple hardened beneath her fingertips, the center of the aureole contracting as if cold. Nervous, she pulled her hand away and yanked the covers flat over her chest. Would the Duke Fernando someday touch her that way? Would he like to feel her skin?
Cordaella turned on her side, drawing her legs up into a circle. The novel had made her think of new things, and was it a sin, these thoughts? Was it wrong to be curious about the secrets between men and women?
She didn’t want to think of the Castilian, not of him or the marriage bed. Instead, closing her eyes, she pictured the Irish knight, Bran O’Brien. She could see his red hair, the color
like copper in the sun. She remembered how tall he was, his shoulders large and wide beneath the black jupon and silver chest plate. He was old but not ancient. He was strong but not fat. She liked his blue eyes and his accent, the way his voice sounded like night.
What would it feel like if he stripped her, lay in bed with her? Cordaella pressed her face into her pillow, eager and yet ashamed. Would he hurt her? What would he even do?
“Cordaella!” Elisabeth sat up, propping herself with one elbow. “You are tossing so much that I cannot sleep. What is the matter with you?”
“No,” Cordaella whispered, forcing her legs out flat, her knees stiff. “I am sorry. Go back to sleep. I promise to be quieter.” She listened while Elisabeth lay back down, watching her cousin’s shoulder shrug back beneath the bed covers. Cordaella closed her eyes again, willing herself to relax, but it was impossible to not think of him, and so she reminded herself of her uncle instead. Yes, her revenge.
*
The sun broke through the clouds for the first time in days. From Peveril’s windows, the pasture stretched below, acres of gold and green. “Soon they will be sowing wheat and rye,” Cordaella said, leaning against the window sill. “And then in spring again, oats, beans, and barley.” She reached out to tap the leaded glass with her fingernail. “The seasons come one after another, more work, another harvest.” She glanced over her shoulder at Philip. “From here the villages look small and clean.”
“What are you thinking now, Cordaella?” She didn’t answer him, watching a fly land on the window and walk in the smallest of steps across the glass.
“Green and lush,” she said, looking out on the farmland. “The village plants and we eat. They work for the castle and then the castle redistributes the food.”
“Whatever is the matter with you?”
“Nothing.” She left the window and sat down on a bench near his feet. She wrapped her arms around her knees, sitting back to look up at him. “Perhaps I might ask you the same question. What is the matter with you? You never laugh with me anymore. You are always so serious, Philip. You don’t want distraction.” Cordaella smiled slightly. “Perhaps it is the books you are reading.”