“I—” The right words evaded Heloise. How could she tell these noblemen of her premonitions without making them loathe her, fear her? Even Duke Richard, sensible as he was, would send her away. People did not want to hear. It terrified them. Dear God, it terrified her.
Then suddenly there was shouting and the oaken door was wrenched open. The throng crowding its portals separated as Anne, Duchess of Gloucester, eyes awash with tears, pushed through to sag against the doorway.
“What is it?” Gloucester asked, his voice serrated with the edge of sudden fear.
“Our son,” whispered the duchess, fingers pressed against her lips. “He choked on a sugared almond but Richard Huddleston turned him upside down, thank God, and he is restored. Oh, my dearest lord.” With a sob of relief, she flew across the chamber to the comfort of her husband’s arms.
Although Gloucester lovingly stroked the back of his fingers down his wife’s cheek, above her head he was staring at Heloise. “When? Just now?” he asked his duchess.
“It was probably the excitement. Foolish child.” Anne of Gloucester raised her head cheerfully, knuckling her tears away, and then she sensed the tension around her and recognized Heloise and Lady Margery, snared in the midst of it. “Let us not spoil the feast,” she said quietly, receiving a plea from her half-sister. “I pray you, my lords, let us return to the merrymaking.”
The duke hesitated, confusion behind his frowning brow. The duchess drew him away, but he was still glancing back at Heloise as the company thronging the dais drew aside deferentially to let their lord and lady pass.
“Cockatrice!” sneered Dr. Dokett, delaying to cast an evil look at Lady Margery and her accomplices. He drove a sandaled foot savagely into the belly of the carcass. “A work of the Devil! And that foul fiend already has your soul! Cavorting shamelessly and you a maid. You should be dismissed!” He hurled the words at Heloise over his shoulder like salt as though she were a demon. And, perhaps, thought Heloise, shaken by the ugly hatred, perhaps she was.
IT WAS A WHILE BEFORE THE DUCHESS’S NEWEST MAID OF honor left the sullen jester and a pensive Lady Margery Huddleston in the great chamber. With her gown belted and her veil and cap back in place over her coif, Heloise stole out through the side entrance of the great chamber and down the stairs to the torchlit castle bailey. Frosty, smoke-laden air enveloped her but she desperately needed solitude and the shadow of night would hide her.
Climb back into the saddle, Margery had advised, face them! But Heloise’s usual bravery was at low ebb. The ache of foreboding was still with her, duller now—the certainty that the chaplain would ensure she became despised. All her delight in life was gone. And the alternative to misery at Middleham was to slink back, a failure and an outcast, to a lifetime of recriminations from her father. For just a little space, back there in the hall, safe behind the disguise, she had felt such confidence. But now . . .
Leaning her shoulder against the cold stone wall, she tried to understand. Had the faeries sent her the premonition? But why, if someone else had been meant to save the boy? Or, worse, was she the Devil’s instrument? Had her action caused the child to choke? Yet forewarned, how else could she have acted? But the cost, oh, Blessed Christ, the cost! Why could she not have been born ordinary? Even the grinding labor of a kitchen wench was better than this wretchedness; a scullion would sink into her cot too worn to dream. Why have you done this to me? her mind called out in pain. But neither God, the Devil, nor the faeries answered.
She must have lingered outside for longer than she realized, not heeding the cold in her despair, when a young man’s voice close by jerked her to her full senses.
“Mistress Ballaster, I have been searching for you.” The vapor from the unexpected words hung in the freezing air. The moonlight lit the face of Piers Harrington, one of the esquires. “Why were you not at the feasting, mistress?” A warm hand fastened round her wrist. “Still, no matter, it’s my good fortune that you are here now.” He might not have seen the cockatrice wreaking disaster, but an accidental assignation was the last thing Heloise could stomach.
“Your pardon, Master Harrington, I cannot stay.” She was shivering, with both the cold and her anxiety over how unseemly it would appear if they were noticed—another arrow to be loaded into the priest’s quiver of complaints, especially as Harrington was the chaplain’s nephew.
“What? No reward for finding you, lovely Heloise?” His tone was slurred but drink had not slowed his wits. In an instant, his arms were caging her against the wall.
“Another time, sir.” Heloise kept her voice amiable and ducked, but two hands thrust her back. His body pinioned her; cold stone pressed against her back. This was not the love that the minstrels sang about. Being fumbled by a wine-reeking youth? Any maidenly fantasy she might have cherished of a stolen meeting with some adoring lover perished. Was this reality? And to think she once had weighed him as a husband.
“Stop that, Master Harrington,” she hissed, slapping at his adventurous hands and dipping her face to escape his breath.
“Damn this!” He snatched at the wire and tisshew veil of her butterfly headdress that was crowding his face, wrenching her cap and coif away. Heloise turned into a Fury: fists, elbows, and toes beat, jabbed, and kicked him.
“There is no shame in kissing a man.” He laughed, lunging in again, and then miraculously there were footsteps and some unseen force lifted the youth in the air and heaved him aside, but not before Harrington had glimpsed her loosened hair. The full moon betrayed her. A stable oath ripped through the air and he was gone.
“DRINK THIS.”
Margery pressed a beaker of mulled wine into Heloise’s frozen hands and tugged the furred wrap closely about her shoulders. “It was a prank, for God’s sake. Her grace will not send you away for that. And the little lord has sworn to my husband that you are not to blame. He was laughing at a page’s antics when he choked.”
“But the chaplain, my lady. He already thinks me a cursed changeling. Dear God, I should have kept my own counsel.”
“And not obeyed your conscience?”
“I believe this is yours, mistress,” interrupted an unfamiliar voice from the threshold. Male arms unfolded and long fingers held out Heloise’s damaged headdress and muddied coif. Heloise shyly took the ruined headgear back, not sure how long Sir Richard Huddleston had been leaning against the door frame. She had not met him face-to-face, for he was newly arrived from Cumbria.
“I have to thank you, sir, for rescuing me from Master Harrington,” she said huskily. And saving the duke’s beloved child.
“Think nothing of it, demoiselle.” Sir Richard brushed one hand against the other as though dealing with Harrington had sullied his palms. His languid gaze lingered fondly upon his wife before he glanced back at her companion. If he felt surprise or loathing at her witch’s hair spread wild and loose, his green eyes gave no sign of it. “There is a messenger come from your father, Mistress Cockatrice.”
“Ill news, sir?” She slid off the bed in alarm.
“I cannot say, demoiselle. His grace will speak with you tomorrow.” He stepped forward into the bedchamber, tossing his hat and gloves upon the bed. “Your handling of the cockatrice was skillful, Mistress Ballaster, and the eggs”—his wife smiled and the air crackled between the two of them—“were a masterpiece.”
“Well laid?” Margery smoothed her skirts skittishly.
“Oh, very.”
Heloise had heard such outrageous rumors about this pair: how the king had seduced Margery, the Kingmaker’s bastard daughter, and sent her to France as a spy. Could it be true that Richard Huddleston had committed high treason to win her love? Seeing them now together for Yuletide, she could believe it.
“I was telling Heloise this morning about the donkey,” Margery said softly. “How it dropped gingerbread in the King of France’s lap.”
“The donkey of Angers! Oh, surely that was I,” answered Sir Richard, raising his enigmatic gaze to his lady’s eye
s for the answering echo of his meaning.
Oh, this was love! This was what Heloise desired of life. She felt both privileged to witness the love between these two, and yet bereft, for she could not imagine Piers Harrington gazing on her like this. The realization brought a sense of reprieve.
“Heloise has been afraid to let people see her beautiful hair,” Margery was telling Sir Richard.
“I cannot think why,” observed her husband. Perhaps his matter-of-fact tone was intended to be reassuring, but Heloise still felt uncomfortable beneath the man’s intelligent study.
“The other children used to say I had witch’s hair,” she whispered.
“And people used to say I was a whore.” A trace of pain laced Margery Huddleston’s voice. “You must not be ashamed. Your hair is a gift from God, not the Devil. It is what you believe that counts. Now, be cheerful, you do not lack for friends.”
Heloise’s fear that the faeries had stolen the real Heloise Ballaster from her cradle fled. Oh, the belief seemed foolish now in such sophisticated company as the Huddlestons’, but she had been bred on such teasing. First her dreams and then her dark brown hair turning silver like an old woman’s. And her father scoffing and saying only a blind man would take her for wife. Well, changeling or not, she would show him. She lifted her chin defiantly and smiled.
“And I should look higher than Harrington if I were you,” Margery added, as if she too had the gift of reading minds. “Marriage is not always an answer.”
“But merely the beginning of the question.” Sir Richard took his wife’s hand and drew her to her feet. “Lend Mistress Ballaster one of your caps, my love, and let us see her safely to her quarters.”
“Pleasant dreams,” they wished her kindly at her door. Dreams? That was the crux of the problem. She was young, accursed, and afraid to dream.
***
FATTENED ON YULETIDE FARE, HOARSE WITH CAROLING, AND aching from the carousing, the household—those who were up—was sluggish and subdued next morning as Heloise followed the page on duty through the great hall to the Duke of Gloucester’s more private demesne.
The southern-facing chamber was warm from the fire and lit by wintry sunlight. The Huddlestons, reunited after months apart on their respective duties, were inevitably together, decorating the windowseat in their silk and velvet, their conversation in full sail as their infant child, fetched from the nursery, crawled about their feet.
Closer to the hearth, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, lolled upon the cushioned settle, with a hound belly up close by and his son propped against his bootcaps. The pages of a bestiary lay open across the child’s knees.
“But it says here, my lord father, that the stone from a hyena’s eye can make you prophesy if you put it under your tongue. Does—” The duke’s hand shook him to silence as Heloise curtsied in the doorway.
“Ah, Heloise.” The Duchess Anne, a younger, compact rendering of Margery Huddleston, looked up from her playing cards. Leaving her mother, the countess, in midgame, she came across to stand beside the duke.
Her errant maid of honor curtsied again and waited, feeling as though she were already on the executioner’s scaffold. At least the chaplain was not present.
“Woman’s intuition is a strange commodity,” observed the duke, fidgeting with the ring on his smallest finger. “Expensive, too, it seems. You have dented my ledger, Mistress Ballaster, not to mention our best flagons.”
“It was out of no malice, I swear to you, your grace.” Desperate, she turned her face to the duchess. “Please, I beg you, do not dismiss me, madam. It shall not happen again.”
“It is not why we summoned you, Heloise,” Gloucester said gently. “Indeed we are certain you acted honestly last night and we thank you for your care of our son. No, rather, it is this.” He lifted up a parchment from the cushions beside him and held it out to her. “Your father’s letter changes matters. Sit down and read it.”
With no choice, she sank down obediently upon the tapestried stool and unfolded the parchment. It contained what she feared: in about twelve lines dictated to his notary, Sir Dudley Ballaster was summoning her back. Because her delicate stepmother was with child and since no man had offered for Heloise, she was to come home and become the chatelaine. Home? No, not the home she had left in Northamptonshire, but some castle called Bramley in Somerset which (he proudly informed her) had been bequeathed to him by a friend. She was to go there.
“It seems we must lose you, Heloise. Your father’s man, Martin, is bidden to take you home.” Duke Richard stood up and kindly drew her to her feet. The boy rose also, straight-shouldered like his father.
Heloise wore her disappointment openly. Free from her father’s tyranny, Gloucester’s household had given her life order and beauty. But nothing endured. If she stayed, the whispers of her premonition and strangeness would seep out and the servants would be crossing themselves as they passed her by. Her fellow maids of honor had kept silent about her witch’s hair but now they would begin to look on her with suspicion; the chaplain would see to that.
The duchess fondly set a hand upon her lord’s brocaded arm. “We . . .” She glanced at her husband. “We wondered if you would like us to receive your younger sister when you can spare her. Of course, there is no need to make a decision now.”
“I thank your grace.” It was a generous invitation. Dionysia was beautiful, normal. Dionysia would soar in the world of Middleham like a comet. “With my father’s permission, I should like to send her here as soon as I may.” That at least would soothe her father’s temper.
“Good lass.” Gloucester nodded approvingly. “Well, it is decided that you should leave tomorrow with Sir Richard and Lady Huddleston as they ride south. Best go while the roads are hard with frost.”
“You have been very diligent in your duties, Heloise. We have grown fond of you.”
“I have been so happy, madam,” Heloise exclaimed, the duke and duchess blurring in her vision like a disturbed watery reflection.
“I know what you return to.” Her grace’s hands framed her shoulders. “I know how difficult fathers can be, believe me.” She turned to include Margery in her observation before adding, “And I think you shall be missed, Heloise, especially by a certain esquire, hmm?”
“No, I do not think so, your grace, not after last evening.”
Margery came in a slither of silk to curl her arm within her half-sister’s. “Heloise is afraid that her unusual hair will repel any suitors.”
Gloucester frowned. “Yes, I heard.” He glanced warily at the blue velvet cap and the carefully pinned veil that Heloise was wearing. “Silver, I believe.” His golden mead eyes lit with kindness. “Surely not so rare as you imagine.”
“What is wrong with it? Can I see?” The child’s voice chimed between them at breast height.
“Nothing is wrong with her hair,” interfered the boy’s grandam firmly from her seat at the small table. “But Mistress Heloise wants to be the same as everyone else. So will you when you get to her age.” Then she turned the overweight cannon of her fifty years fully upon Heloise. “You will find, young woman, that other worries will chase away such idle thoughts as you grow older. A broken fingernail or tresses that do not curl will become insignificant when you have a house to run and children at your skirts. You will see.”
I have already seen, thought Heloise rebelliously, biting back a retort, angry that the older woman thought her vain and frivolous. I have already slaved for my father day and night with no smile or word of thanks to ease my burden.
“My lady,” she protested, “I assure you I know that hard—” She faltered, not because the countess’s attention was back upon the playing cards, but because it was happening again—the blurring of reality and possibility.
It was as if her lungs were bursting. Before her eyes, Duchess Anne’s skin was paling. Blood flecked the lady’s lips like spittle; the serene eyes were retreating, distressed, dilated, into cavernous sockets; and the world was darken
ing.
“Heloise! Heloise!” Margery Huddleston’s fingers were clamped about her wrist, jerking her back by physical pain into the present.
“I must go,” whispered Heloise, her mind shrieking at the invasion, not daring to look at any of the others, lest the vision return.
Go from Middleham, aye, but then what?
Two
BRECKNOCK, WALES, LATEFEBRUARY 1483 Harry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, rose from his carved chair, dismissing his council with an impatient gesture. His chamberlain, Latimer, gathered up his notes noisily and departed, his disapproval stated in the briefness of his bow. The other councilors followed almost at a tiptoe like husbands back from a carousal. All except Sir Miles Rushden, who closed the door behind them and swung round, his gaze questioning Harry’s decision.
“I do not give a cuss if you disapprove, Miles. You are not going to make me change my mind this time,” the duke exclaimed, thrusting the lower window’s shutters open. Below the castle, the town of Brecknock shivered against the winter gusts. Beyond, the hills rose from the vale like a long green wave and dark tumbling breakers of land heaved up into the shrouded mountains. Rough, raw, the wind from Pen-y-Fan’s steep ridge rushed into the room, frightening the papers on the table.
Miles shifted a river-smoothed pebble across to anchor the dispatches and wrapped his fur-edged cote more closely across his breast.
“It is but a small matter to give Ralph the vacant stewardship at Yalding, your grace,” he argued, leaning across to take a handful of sweet chestnuts from the pewter salver. He wisely kept to one side of the hearth as he nicked each with his dagger before he pokered them into the embers; the cold draught had sent the fire into a coughing fit.
“No,” muttered the duke, glaring resentfully at the distant fog-shrouded beacons. He looked over his shoulder and scowled. “Jesu! Ralph will never make Yalding pay.”
“Surely he deserves the chance to prove himself?” Not that Miles had a great liking for this particular servant of Harry’s, but Ralph’s wife, Eleanor, was efficient and steadfast.
Moonlight And Shadow Page 2