Juliet Landon

by The Maiden's Abduction

  The stately journey by barge from Sluys through the port of Damme and on towards Brugge gave her no reason to revise this impression, having been thoroughly stared at by everyone from small children and dockers to the brawny lightermen and their mates at every lock. Even their dogs had stared. And if the idea to escape had crossed her mind while her captor was otherwise engaged, it was quickly extinguished by three of the crew who hovered with decided intent.

  Staring in her turn, she allowed the unintelligible burble of voices to isolate her and to focus her attention instead towards the prettily gabled houses packaged into tidy rows, the sparkling crispness of the ironed-out landscape, the willows and windmills that lined the waterway. The plunging and roaring of the wind-tossed carrack could not have been more different from this overwhelming sense of peace in which the sound of voices rose and fell with the swish of the barge through the water. Horizontal lines were reflected and multiplied, and even the clouds obediently followed the lie of the land. She could have asked for advance notice of this, had she not been too proud, but not even Master Silas could have described the tranquillity she inhaled like a healing balsam, or the hypnotic cut of the boat through sky-blue satin like newly sharpened shears. He could, however, understand the Flemish language.

  Cecily leaned towards Isolde, pale and frowning. ‘What are they saying?’ she whispered loudly. ‘Why are they staring? Is it your head-dress again?’

  ‘Probably.’ Isolde shrugged, glancing at the array of white wimples over plaits coiled like ship’s ropes.

  One matron, with a starched head-dress that looked ready to sail at any moment, leaned towards Silas with a grin that showed more gum than teeth. Indicating Isolde, she spoke, and he smiled a reply in Flemish.

  Defensive, Cecily leaned from Isolde’s other side. ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘The dame says that my lady is very beautiful,’ Silas told her without a glance at Isolde. ‘And I agree with her.’

  Regardless of the fact that the woman had hold of the wrong end of the stick, the compliment was enough to convince Mistress Cecily that the Flemings were, after all, people of discernment and should be treated with generosity, whether they were foreign or not. Accordingly, she removed herself unsteadily from Isolde’s side, gestured to Silas to change places, and began a conversation with the starched lady by signs, gestures and like-sounding words as if she had known her for years.

  Isolde was not so easily won, but saw no discreet way of removing the arm that came warmly across her back. ‘You must not let them believe that,’ she said. ‘I am not your lady nor anyone else’s.’

  ‘That’s Brugge,’ Silas replied diverting the rebuke with a finger that pointed towards the towers and spires appearing on the skyline. ‘See, here are the first houses, and soon we’ll be right in amongst them. And windmills, see. Dozens of them.’

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  ‘No, maid, I’m afraid I didn’t. But I heard what the old crone said and it sounds as if her understanding is better than yours in some areas. Now, let me show you that tallest tower…that’s the great belfry.’

  ‘I cannot believe this is happening,’ she said in some irritation.

  ‘They’re going to have to lower the mast to get under the bridge. Mind your head-dress.’

  ‘I’m dreaming this.’

  ‘There we go. Look, those smaller boats are called skiffs. That’s how the people of Brugge get about. Turn back and look…the children are waving.’

  ‘I shall wake any moment now.’

  ‘You are awake. Wave to them.’

  ‘No, I’m being abducted. This cannot be happening. Wake me,’ she insisted.

  His arm tightened across her shoulders as he turned his mouth toward her ear, overcoming the padded and embroidered barrier of the side-pieces. ‘Courage,’ he whispered. ‘Most women would have swooned times over by now, but you have withstood—’

  ‘Every hardship!’ she whispered back, disguising her snarl beneath a smile. ‘Don ‘t tell me I’ve withstood my ordeal like a man or I shall dive overboard.’

  ‘Hardly like a man, if my memory serves me.’ He grinned. ‘Was it so very hard to bear, Isolde?’

  ‘That was the worst part!’ she hissed, understanding his reference.

  ‘A dream, like the rest?’

  ‘A nightmare!’

  The warmth of his soft laugh caught her cheek and she blushed, turning her head away to hide the confusion in her eyes. But a warm firm finger eased her back to face him. ‘It was no nightmare, maid, and you know it,’ he softly rebuked her. ‘Nor will your new life in Brugge be so, unless you refuse to be won over by what it has to offer you. Look around, see…is it not magical? Forget what you’ve left behind. You’ll be perfectly safe here. I shall not shackle you, and you’ll see more of life than ever you’ve seen before, and, what’s more, you’ll not be hidden from view as you have been so far. It’s time others were allowed to see something of you.’

  ‘Being stared at, you mean? Is that what I’ll have to suffer?’

  ‘Probably. I think you’ll have to get used to plenty of that.’

  ‘And the language, and the food, and you?’

  The finger moved gently upon her cheek, and again she felt his slow smile. ‘None of those have presented any real problems so far, have they? In fact, quite the contrary, eh?’

  She tried to hide the reluctant smile but was only partly successful.

  ‘That’s better. Now, give in to this place and enjoy it. You’ll have every comfort, I promise you. More than you had in York, and certainly more than you’d have with my brother.’

  ‘That would not be difficult. Where are we going?’

  ‘To my house. The boat takes us right to the door.’

  She knew that to be an exaggeration. ‘But surely no one will expect you to bring a woman back with you, will they?’

  ‘I’m not taking a woman back, I’m taking a lady. The Flemings know the difference; they’re a courteous people. And what my servants expect is irrelevant; they’re paid to care for me, not to ask questions about my guests.’

  ‘Like your crew?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘You make a habit of abducting ladies, then?’

  Slowly, like an owl, he blinked at her. ‘Oh, I have one in every room, two in the attic, four in the cellars and one in the outhouse.’

  ‘So where do I go?’

  ‘Where you will, maid.’

  She tried to terminate this facetiousness by looking away, but found it impossible. His eyes, deep and percipient, reflected his understanding of her anxieties as much as her secret thoughts, and his handsome head beneath the intricately untidy turban reminded her of a figure she had noticed in the Flemish Book of Hours in the room at Scarborough, an elegant figure that commanded the page and everyone on it by his presence. And, but for this quiet air of authority, his assurance and advice, Isolde might have continued to dwell on her plight, to overlook the first entrancing sights and sounds Brugge had to offer as they slid silently into its embrace.

  The sun was still high, flooding the buildings and canals with a palette of rose-pinks, sand, mossy-greys and slate. Glimpses of gardens offered them the greens of trim bushes, well-behaved trees and the bright splash of flowers on balcony and sill. Windows hung precariously over the water or retired into rows, penetrating the tall stepped gables high above, and, swished by the constant wake of passing boats, the doors, gates, steps and arches appeared to lead directly into the buildings. Bricks, new to Isolde, made an apricot-coloured web over the walls to enclose a filigree of lancet windows, balustrades and cut stonework that reminded her of insets of lace. Beyond all that, massive buttresses of stone rose to assert some authority on a grander scale. Isolde was entranced.

  Silas kept his commentary to a minimum, occasionally bringing his arm up to rest on her shoulder to point to the great towering belfry as they passed, then to St Donation’s and the tall bristling spire of Our Lady’s Church. ‘We live opp
osite,’ he whispered. His pointing hand turned to a wave as a shout of greeting came from the bridge ahead.

  ‘Silas! Meester Silas! Ahoy!’

  They swept beneath the happily waving man and found that, on the other side, the bridge was now lined with staring people. ‘Pieter!’ called Silas, waving.

  ‘You’re home!’ A feathered hat waved at them as if it were alive.

  ‘Go and tell them, then.’

  Isolde lost count of the bridges. One of them, more like a tunnel, held houses suspended over the water, but the last one led them to a high wall bathed in sunshine where the boat drew up to a step below a wooden door arched into the mellow brickwork. Isolde looked at Silas in surprise.

  ‘You didn’t believe me, did you?’ he smiled. ‘Come, we’re home.’

  ‘I get the cellar?’

  ‘No. That’s only for special guests.’

  ‘So, ordinary guests…?’

  ‘Have to make do with the upper floors. Give me your hand.’

  The door from the canal led them directly into a garden enclosed by the wall, the ends of two buildings and the elegant form of another. Sun-drenched lavender bushes, neatly squared lawns and cobbled pathways led them round the building on the right and into a sunny courtyard where two cats sprawled over the lips of a large yawning doorway. Tubs of gilly-flowers and marigolds, mauve-tipped rosemary and bay trees softened the angular lines of a wooden trellis through which pink and white roses hung like heads through windows.

  They had not reached the door before they were greeted by emerging figures dressed in tones of black, brown and plum, with white at head and breast reflecting light onto their beaming faces. ‘Meester Silas…ah…welkom…welkom!’

  Pieter of the feathered hat had beaten the boat by seconds.

  Silas had known, of course, in those first few moments when she had responded with such immediacy to his surliness at Scarborough, that she would be a handful. Even in the dim light of the Brakespeares’ courtyard he had seen the set of her jaw, the determination to take control and the quick reversal when she saw her maid’s distress. That had hardly been because she couldn’t manage without a maid. Her decisions were impulsive, perhaps too much so. The dash from York to Scarborough was not the well-considered act of a woman with a good reputation, but she was no hoyden and certainly no child; her anger at his familiarity had convinced him of that.

  Wisely, though, she had chanelled her fears into a scornful anger which, after that first understandable over-reaction, he had been careful to deflect with some humour and more than a little tolerance. And now, too soon, the second test had arrived, when she would have to adapt to semi-confinement in a strange setting with few of the familiar essentials to ease the transition. Naturally he would do all he could to assist, but what followed would be a true test of her character. And already she was making a visible effort. He would have liked more time to warn his household and to prepare a room that would restore her to the comforts she must have longed for but had never once lamented. Ah, well, she would no doubt have her own ideas about how to do that.

  Silas smiled to himself with a soupçon of satisfaction. To have achieved two such master strokes at once was nothing short of brilliant, though the possibility that Fryde might harass Elizabeth at Scarborough was the one cloud on the horizon that turned the smile quickly to a frown. But, no, Fryde would not link Isolde with a cousin of the La Vallons, and by the time Alderman Fryde’s enquiries were under way his stolen horses would be back in York, together with an advance party of Sir Gillan’s men to give him hell, Silas hoped. His mortification would be worth witnessing.

  What disturbed Silas, however, was the degree of closeness between Isolde’s father and Alderman Henry Fryde, which must initially have included enough trust to make York’s most unscrupulous and ambitious merchant Isolde’s temporary guardian. It could be, he mused, that, living in the far-flung hill country with only sheep for near-neighbours, one could know little of erstwhile friends in York or of the reputations that grew as fast as wealth. As for Felicia and Sir Gillan…? Silas’s smile returned—they were both getting what they deserved. And so was his own father. And, for that matter, so was Bard. In fact, the only one not to do so was the lass herself, who would either have to stay with him or enter a convent. Only time would tell which she would choose.

  The figure of a man entering the courtyard caught his attention. The man stooped to pick up one of the cats and drape it over his shoulder, his shape in the doorway blotting out the light.

  But Silas was in no doubt of his visitor’s identity. ‘William…sir. I am honoured. What a treat. How did you—?’

  ‘How did I know, Silas Mariner?’ The man laughed, holding out a hand. ‘Why, the whole town knows. Can you not hear the bells, lad?’

  Pieter de Hoed, with his usual sharpness, had already warned young Mei that she would have to become a more attentive chambermaid than ever, by the look of things, because the lady in his master’s company bore an expression which no one could have called indulgent. Mei was therefore quaking in her stout leather shoes as she led the two guests up a winding wooden staircase to the room that Meester Silas had indicated, the one overlooking the canal. Heartened by her recent success at communication with the starched lady on the boat, Cecily was ready to try it out again on Mei, and, with a similar system of symbols and smiles, came to a mutual understanding remarkably quickly. Hot water, clothes from their panniers, and food. Yes, thank you, she had noticed the linen towels.

  Spreadeagled on the bed, Isolde was staring in silence at the delicate curves of a metalwork chandelier and the pattern of lines that rippled across the wooden rafters above her, bouncing like will-o’-the-wisps through the open window from the water. ‘I shall grow fins,’ she murmured drowsily. ‘I shall grow a tail like the mermaids. None of this is real.’

  ‘Nice room, though,’ Cecily said matter-of-factly, closing the door on the two lads who had brought up the luggage. ‘And big enough. Not like that box we had in York. What’s the bed like?’

  ‘Big,’ Isolde agreed. She looked around her. ‘Yes, it is. Nice.’

  The bed-curtains of aquamarine velvet lined with silk were tied up into pendulous buns with moss-green silken cords, and the matching bedcover was large enough to drape its embroidered borders heavily on to the floor in a tangled strapwork of gold and green. A bolster and cushions were arranged across the bed-head of carved and pierced woodwork that made a line of pinnacles like spires on a distant skyline. Softly mellowed oak panelled every surface, cut into pierced trefoils on the tops of the window shutters and across the back of a bench where a green woollen rug hung in tassels over the seat. A convex mirror surrounded by enamelled roundels hung on the far wall to follow their every move.

  Intrigued, Isolde swung her feet down to the soft pile of carpet where an intricate pattern of red, brown, green and blue covered it from edge to edge. A kneeling cushion of the same design lay on the ledge of a prie-dieu, and Isolde knew without being told that it had come by camel-caravan from the other side of the world, where people had been known to drop off the edge. Crossing to the prie-dieu, she knelt to look more closely at the Book of Hours full of glowing pictures like the one she had seen at Dame Elizabeth’s house. Quietly, she turned over the stiff pages and began to search for a prayer for safe arrivals while at the same time studying each of the illustrations of daily life for the figure which had dominated the page.

  At the time, Isolde had not taken her captor’s promise of every comfort too seriously, and was therefore surprised to find that, after the deprivations of the voyage, he appeared to be making an effort to compensate for all that she had lost. Had he but known it, she had lost little in York except her father’s approval of her behaviour; the Fryde family had offered no comforts to speak of, their hospitality being far worse than Silas’s custody. Naturally, she had been careful not to make the comparison in his hearing, nor did she display more than a polite approval of the cool, clean, well-managed house
and caring servants, the excellent food and restrained but unmistakable signs of affluence which were in direct contrast to the Frydes’ ostentation.

  It was difficult not to compare the two merchants, albeit they were years apart in age and experience. Yet here was Silas La Vallon with a beautiful house in Brugge and another in York, enough wealth to keep servants in both, and a ship with a permanent crew. Pride had not allowed her to show the slightest interest in either his merchandise or his clients, nor had the bales and boxes unloaded at Sluys given any indication of their contents, but she would have given much to know the source of his wealth. Was it in those carpets from the Orient? The spices? The grain? Or was it in the woollen goods that came to Flanders to be finished, then re-imported? This was a question that might have occupied her mind before her first day in Brugge had drawn to a close. But then she was introduced to Silas’s visitor, which raised a completely different set of questions.

  Chapter Four

  ‘What on earth am I going to wear?’ Isolde said crossly. ‘If I’d had more notice, I might have been able to refurbish my best blue gown and find some new fur to trim it, but it’s been screwed up in the pannier for a week. And what about my head-dress? It doesn’t match, and I can hardly attend court with my hair loose at my age, can I?’

  That was not quite what she meant, and Silas knew it. A loose-haired maid residing with an eligible bachelor would raise a few eyebrows. ‘Shh! Calm down, Isolde. Come out here and let me explain what it’s all about instead of getting worked up about what to put on your head. Come on!’ He took her firmly by the elbow and led her out into the courtyard. The full moon lit their way through the rose-covered trellis and into the garden laid out in plots and grassy pathways edged about with wooden rails. The Flemings, it seemed, had a passion for tidiness. They found a stone bench and sat, Isolde rigidly upright, Silas hoping that by taking one of her hands she would soften. ‘William is a very good friend,’ he explained. ‘He came over specially to tell us about it.’