Juliet Landon

by The Maiden's Abduction

  ‘But he didn’t come to me,’ Isolde whispered.

  Elizabeth squeezed Isolde’s hand, unable to conceal a huff of laughter, however inappropriate. ‘There have been times,’ she said, ‘when I’ve crept downstairs here to find out why he’s not in his bed and he’s still been going over my accounts, with candlewax dripping down on to the table and ice crystals creeping up the insides of the windows. I’ve also seen him asleep with his head on a pile of papers. His energy and commitment are quite astonishing, Isolde, my dear.’

  The tears and laughter spilled out together. ‘I know. Too much.’

  ‘Ah, that’s it, is it? You’d have preferred a lengthier wooing?’

  Isolde nodded. ‘No woman wants to be wooed as a weapon against someone else. He’s never once spoken of love to me, only of bargains and possessions, so I have no way of knowing his true feelings. To say he wants me and intends to keep me is neither here nor there: one could say as much for a favourite hawk or a piece of merchandise. I love him, Elizabeth, but I’m not prepared to be a pawn in a game of war against Master Fryde or my father. Allard and I have agreed that I must go home, where I cannot be used so, even though I fear he’ll find it inconvenient.’

  ‘Who, Silas?’

  ‘No, my father.’

  ‘Then why not simply stay here?’

  ‘Because I may be with child, and my father’s house is the only place where it would be safe.’

  ‘I see. So you discussed it? He said he’d claim it?’

  ‘In no uncertain terms. He believes a child would be an even better weapon to use against my father. He’d not let either of us go then, at any price.’

  Elizabeth took up the heavy iron fire-tongs and prodded the log viciously into life. ‘I can scarce believe Silas could say anything so insensitive. Really! Was that supposed to persuade you to stay? It would have persuaded me to go. Silas in love is not exactly Silas in tact, is he?’

  ‘Well, I suppose he was not so much offering me a choice of going or staying as whether to stay as a potential escapee or as his mistress, which he said would be more comfortable. And he was very generous, and never unkind, but he’s not in love with me, Elizabeth. Revenge, not love. Any future with him would have got off on quite the wrong foot.’

  ‘In that, you’re probably right. It would; but even so, my dear, you could stay until you’re sure, couldn’t you? We can send a message to your father to say that Allard is here and that you’re quite safe. Would that do? I don’t suppose Master Caxton will be going far until he feels stronger. And as for poor Cecily, well, she’s suffered more than any of you, I think. She’s certainly very unwell.’

  ‘Of course, you’re quite right. I was thinking only of myself. Cecily must be fully recovered before any more journeys, but would you allow me to be of some use while I’m here? I can do accounts, order a household, garden, work in the stillroom, the dairy, embroider, write letters…sew…?’

  She was gathered into a warm hug that rocked and patted and soothed her with a surge of affection she had lacked over the wearisome days of the voyage. ‘Yes, of course you can help. See…’ she held Isolde away ‘…here’s Emmie with warm possets for us both. There, now. Let’s drink to that, shall we?’

  Isolde did not ask Dame Elizabeth, then or later, whether she expected Silas to visit Scarborough again. His small ship was now in the harbour and Caxton had said that no other ship was due to leave Sluys for at least a week, so that gave her time enough to tend Cecily, to gather her scattered wits and to dry their clothes, which were few, the rest having been left behind in Brugge. The conversation with her hostess had helped, as nothing else could have done, towards her understanding of Silas’s drive for revenge, and it took little time for her to deliberate upon the relative importance of the two targets: Henry Fryde or her father.

  Her brother Allard’s views were typically unsentimental. ‘What happens when it’s known that Silas abducted you, then?’ he said, leaning against the heavy oak door of the dairy. ‘He’ll be in a worse position than Fryde, won’t he?’

  Isolde skimmed the thick cream off a shallow bowl of milk and tipped it into a jug. ‘There’s a churn over there,’ she said, not looking. ‘It needs a strong arm. Knowing Silas, he’d probably say I went willingly and, although I didn’t, he knows I’d not contradict that. He’d say that Bard rescued me from Fryde’s disgusting home and that Fryde didn’t know or care who I was seeing, nor did he even know where to start looking. He didn’t, did he?’ She stopped skimming to turn to him.

  ‘Father’s men said not, but he managed to get his stupid son to Brugge before me, so how did he do that, I wonder?’

  Isolde wiped a finger across the rim of the scoop and licked it. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘Well, I think I do. That frisky young brother of Silas’s.’

  ‘What, Bard?’

  ‘Father’s men were approached by Fryde’s wife, who’d learned from her maid about Bard’s plans. He doesn’t lose a moment, does he, our Bard?’

  ‘So Mistress Fryde told her husband. Surely not!’

  ‘I don’t believe she wanted to. I believe she was followed and made to tell what she knew, and then junior Fryde was packed off that night, before me.’

  ‘And he’s still there, Allard. In Brugge.’

  ‘Yes, love. But you’re not, so stop worrying. If Silas can’t fix him, then no one can.’

  ‘You like him, don’t you?’

  Allard came to her side and took a fingerful of cream to his mouth. ‘Listen, love. I’m the eldest son, and so is Silas. If we like and respect each other, how can an age-old feud possibly continue? Whatever started it is long forgotten now. It’s history. I don’t truly believe that Father cares any more.’

  ‘Then why would he take Felicia?’

  Infuriatingly, he smacked his lips and headed for the door. ‘Perhaps you should ask Father when next you see him. Or Felicia.’

  She tried to take Allard’s advice to stop worrying, but the image of Martin Fryde lying in the murky waters of the Dijver, shrieking and yelling while Silas walked calmly away, stayed uncomfortably in her memory all afternoon. Martin would not go meekly home after such an insult.

  Fully rested and nursed back to comfort, Master Caxton found that his captive audience now included Dame Elizabeth’s aged father, who was a scholar of astronomy, astrology, alchemy and mathematics, and whose deafness was a great burden to him. Closeted together for hours each day, the gentle white-haired old man and his two guests could hardly tear themselves apart for meals, and as each day passed the excuse was given that just another day would give extra strength to the broken arm which, in the privacy of the study, wielded a pen much as it had done before, if more slowly. Old Master Abbotson and Allard did their part to contrive at the slow progress of the healing, though Caxton himself was far from reluctant, being on the receiving end of Dame Elizabeth’s concern. It was what he had lacked for many a day. Silas’s praises of her had come nowhere near the truth. He was entranced. Captivated. And Dame Elizabeth lit up like a lantern whenever he came near. Even the boys noticed.

  ‘I thought he was supposed to be going to London, Mother,’ John said to her in the counting-house. The acrobatic young man was sitting on the window-ledge with his feet on his mother’s table, leaning backwards out of the window to clean the salt spray off the thick greenish panes of glass.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, John, hold on!’ she said, clinging to his feet. ‘He is going to London, but he can hardly be expected to ride with a broken arm, can he?’

  ‘Other men do,’ he called, from a distorted greenish-pink angle.

  ‘Well, he’s not like other men,’ came the defensive reply.

  John reappeared, grinning cheekily. ‘No, he’s not, is he? We’ve noticed that, haven’t we, Mother?’

  ‘Exactly what d’ye mean by that, John Brakespeare? And take that grin off your face.’

  He leaned his arms across his knees, filling the square of light with his f
rame. ‘Has it not occurred to you that Cousin Silas sent Master Caxton here for a purpose? That he could easily have had him put ashore at the port of London before sending the ship up here to Scarborough? It would not have taken more than a couple of days to do that, you know. Would it?’

  ‘No doubt Silas had his own good reasons, John.’

  ‘Yes!’ John clambered down, letting the sun pour into the room. ‘I’m sure Silas had his own good reasons. I’m also glad he sent Mistress Isolde back.’

  ‘John…come back here!’ John was on his way out. ‘Listen! Silas did not send Isolde back. And you must not pester her with your attentions.’

  ‘Mother, I’m not pestering her. I’m simply being attentive, that’s all. It’ll give Silas a thing or two to think about when he gets back; it’s time somebody took the wind out of his sails.’

  Dame Elizabeth watched him bounce away and turned, tight-lipped, to straighten her papers. If anyone could take the wind out of Silas’s sails, it was not likely to be young John.

  Chapter Eleven

  With time to herself at last, no demands on her emotions, no expectations, no restrictions to her freedom, Isolde came close to regaining control of the life which had been hers until so recently. One by one the constraints fell away, each new day bringing with it a peace that contrasted strangely with the glamour of Brugge, the hint of danger and intrigue, the competition that had so disgusted Hugo van der Goes. Here, there was no braiding and parading, no need to impress or to keep up the dreadful pretence of being secure in a man’s love. Each day came with the sharp scent of September that lifted a veil off the sea and held it high above the corn-sheared fields, ripening the glorious brightness and drawing foraging bees into the harvest-laden air to bumble the late-summer blooms and fill the hives. Each day she took upon herself the tasks that had been hers at home, already quite certain in the way that women have that something had already taken possession of her body and that she was no longer one alone, but two. Her courses were two weeks late. Dame Elizabeth had said it could be the voyage, the shock, her emotions, but Isolde knew, and was doubly thankful that she had called a halt, just in time, to the humiliating bargaining.

  Purposely, she refrained from discussing Silas and his affairs, though from her upstairs window she searched each speck of white on the wide horizon and was torn between relief and grief that he was apparently making no mad dash across the ocean to claim what he’d insisted was his alone.

  The messenger who had ridden to inform her father had returned days ago with a message to say that he would come to escort her home. He had given no indication when that would be, and from her seemingly innocent enquiry about the La Vallon woman, she learned that she was still there. Well, that would soon right itself, for surely their fathers would review the situation once it was known that she was home again.

  Yet she was by no means as sure as Silas had been that her father would want a La Vallon brat to foster, and at such times of doubt she took to walking barefoot along the sandy coastline towards the rocks below the cliffs where, from Silas’s ship, she had seen the breakers washing them with foam. Here, she could allow her losses and gains to fight it out while she called into the eternal wind what she dared not even whisper elsewhere. ‘Silas…Silas…Silas!’

  With the return of Master Caxton’s strength and the excuses growing accordingly weaker, he set off for London, with Allard to assist him and a tearful departure to hold in his memory. Both Isolde and her brother were aware that the printer and his affectionate hostess regretted the empty years with only Silas’s version of their virtues to go on, and Caxton’s promise to return was, they all knew, not merely to recoup the joys of old Master Abbotson’s company.

  The house by the quay seemed desolate without them. With an eye to the main chance, young Master Brakespeare lost no time in stepping into the breach left by the two loved ones, and though his duty to his mother was never stronger, his infatuation with Isolde was beyond his restraint, as yet. Still in the dark about the mysteries of sexual attraction, he tried everything he could think of to engage her interest; flattery, attentiveness and a tendency to appear round every corner being the backbone of his repertoire. Finally, Isolde herself was driven to frenzied attempts to evade him: his friendship she could tolerate, but not this.

  Telling no one where she was going, she sauntered to the far end of the busy quay and down on to the wide expanse of sand that curved like a sickle towards the shallow outcrop of rocks on the headland, slipping off her shoes and the ribbon that bound her hair. The tide was far out, no more than a silver thread underlining a hem of grey tissue, and the constant buffeting of the wind in her ears tore at the sea’s distant murmur, at the mewing of the gulls and at the thoughts that wrapped an ache inside her breast.

  The sand was hard and cool beneath her feet as she dragged a strand of bladder-wrack behind her towards warm pools like satin pockets, or mirrors to reflect the clouds. Clambering upwards, she perched like a hidden sentry, watching, willing, daring, despairing, placing a hand over her womb in the sudden realisation that the part of him there, inside her, was a solace to her emptiness, not a penance for her weakness.

  Far out on the glittering edge of water, women pushed triangular nets on poles along the sea-bed to catch millions of grey shrimps and the occasional careless crab. Towards the town, children scampered, their voices lost in the distance, and a lone figure in a white shirt walked beside his horse, taking bites out of something in his hand. He stopped to throw it far out to sea with a powerful bend of his body and a familiar flick of the arm, an image so heart-stoppingly familiar that Isolde was riveted, her heartache tearing a sob from her throat before she could catch it. Her face crumpled, and she held it together with her two hands, trembling with black despair and forcing herself to look again through the tunnel of her hair.

  He was tall and well built. His white shirt billowed in the wind and flattened itself against his chest and shoulders, tearing open a wide expanse of body and forearm. Black hair whipped across his face and, as he stopped to examine the distant rocks, he held it back with a quick slide of his fingers that shaded his eyes and focussed them. The rocks were grey, brown, green and draped with seaweed, but there, over there by that deep shadow, was a hint of red that fluttered, and two pink arms holding it back. But for that, her camouflage would have been perfect.

  ‘Thank you, faithful Cecily.’ He laughed, throwing himself into the saddle. The horse bounded forward.

  The motionless figure on the rocks came alive in the blink of an eye, suddenly erupting in a flurry of moss colours that had, until that moment, been a part of the landscape. The red mass of hair lifted and streamed behind her as she leapt, barefoot, from rock to rock on to the sand, her howls reaching him before he could see that they were not laughter, like his.

  He dismounted and ran, catching her in his arms as she leapt at him, burying her primitive wails into the cool skin of his throat, wrapping her slender form close to him with a ravenous greed too powerful for words. He rocked her and let her weep unhindered until he carried her to the flat slabs of stone, when her first words became recognisable as, ‘Where’s your ship?’

  He settled her inside his arms, enclosing her with his long legs, and pushed back the wild tangle to find her wet eyes. She clung to him, wiping her tears on his shirt.

  ‘It’s at York, sweetheart. I met your father there. He’s come for you.’

  ‘He’s here at Scarborough?’

  ‘Yes, love. We came together by road.’

  The grimace of weeping became a laugh. ‘To rescue me?’

  ‘To rescue you. We’re coming in twos now, you see.’

  ‘Oh, Silas!’

  Their kisses were breathless and almost childlike in an effort to taste every reachable surface, quickly, before it disappeared. But now something else slipped through the kisses, almost colliding upon their lips. ‘I love you…love you…love you! Ah, beloved.’

  ‘I love you, Silas. I’ve been so u
nhappy without you. Why didn’t you—’

  ‘You’d not have believed me, would you? You doubted me, my motives. I should have told you, sweetheart. Forgive me, but you must have known that I love you. I adore you.’

  ‘I was so angry. I didn’t give you a chance to explain. Forgive me, love?’

  ‘Angry about what? Explain what?’

  ‘About the Duchess. When she came the night before I left.’

  ‘That wasn’t the Duchess, love.’ His eyes twinkled into hers and he kissed first one eyelid and then the other. ‘You thought it was…oh, God!’

  ‘It wasn’t?’

  ‘No, it was Ann-Marie, bringing me a message. You saw her?’

  ‘I saw, yes. But why would Ann-Marie bring you a message at that time of night? Was it to do with Bard?’

  ‘No, Bard was in bed. It was more serious than that.’ He sighed, and kissed her again. ‘I’ll tell you. She’d been sent by the Duchess to tell me that young Fryde had been trying to get his revenge, as I suspected he would. He’d sent a message to the Duke, telling him that the Duchess and I had been lovers in York before her marriage and suggesting that we still were.’

  ‘Oh…no! She was warning you to flee?’

  ‘No, not at all. There was no reason why I should. Apparently the Duke sent for young Fryde to appear at the Princenhof and to repeat his accusations in front of the Duchess. He had no option but to go, but he didn’t dare repeat it to her face because he only had his father’s word for it, and he dared not drag his father into it. What a fool the lad is! But the Duke was just as angry as if he had done, and he’s thrown young Fryde and his two pals into the Steen—that’s the big stone gaol, love. He’s likely to be there for some time.’

  ‘So the Duchess wanted you to know that?’

  ‘She wanted me to know that the Duke was going to send for me the next morning to hear my side of the story. She had already denied it, naturally, and she wanted to be sure that I knew to do the same. She sent Ann-Marie because she knows that Ann-Marie’s the only one who knows the truth and has my interests at heart.’