Moonlight And Shadow

by Isolde Martyn

  With a sigh she rearranged the fireguard, then dutifully knelt again to finish pinning Dionysia’s hem, but her discontent was epidemic. Their old nurse, darning by the window, was muttering about her eyesight, and at the small table, despite Matillis’s attempt to hold the peace, Heloise’s youngest sisters were growing peevish, squabbling over scraps to clothe their dolls.

  “Are you nearly done, Heloise?” asked Dionysia with a seventeen-year-old’s impatience, draping an uncut sweep of emerald satin across her perfect bosom and squinting to see what a lock of her golden hair looked like against the green.

  “How can I finish this if you fidget so?” Heloise chided, trying to make the hem flow gracefully into the short train so that they could start sewing on the embroidered border.

  “Pah, a few rucks will not show when the border is on. Can we set this lower?” Dionysia poked discontentedly at the broad band of honey-hued silk that edged her bodice and reassessed her reflection.

  “No, Didie, we cannot. It took me all last evening to shape it.” Heloise rose wearily to her feet; picking off the wisps of thread that clung to her fine wool skirts. “I have never known a fabric to slither so.”

  Behind her, Nurse set the darned woolen stocking aside. “Them Rushdens,” she declared with a tone that promised gossip, and all the sisters turned towards her. “Slitherin’ is what put me in mind of it. The Rushden serpent story.” Matillis, unused to these utterances, looked perturbed but Nurse continued: “They say that over two hundred years ago in the days of King Edward Longshanks, the Lady Dyota Rushden cuckolded her husband by making a pact with the Devil.”

  “What does ‘cuckolded’ mean?” asked Lucretia, the youngest at ten years old, who was subsequently dispatched from the chamber to find a nonexistent bag of mending.

  “What kind of pact?” whispered Dionysia as soon as the door closed.

  “The fiend lay with her as a serpent.”

  “Better than a bull,” muttered Heloise, wondering just how snakes mated. “Would it not have been more sensible for the Devil to keep a human form?”

  “Perhaps he likes variety. I should prefer a swan myself,” giggled Dionysia, glancing around as if Lucifer ventured out of Hell to note her name.

  “Please go on, Nurse,” urged Clio, thirteen years old, still smirking at the petty victory over her younger sister.

  “And in each generation ever since that day”—the old woman lowered her voice—“there has been a Rushden with the soul of a serpent.”

  “No more, Nurse,” protested Heloise. This talking of the Rushdens was stirring up unease—a foreboding—not exactly that something calamitous would happen, rather, that Fortune had shifted the wheel and a change had occurred.

  “It’s no gossip, bless you, my darling. There’s wicked black serpents on the Rushdens’ insignia to prove it.” The old woman was well versed in the heraldic flauntings and genealogia of her betters.

  “Hmm, that story is not in the least original.” Heloise picked up Lucretia’s doll from the small table and plucked at its veil. “The Plantagenets claimed to be descended from the Devil much further back than that. Mayhap we should invent a legend to give ourselves respectability.”

  “Do we know any lusty swans?” Dionysia flounced across to tuck her arm through Heloise’s and beam at Matillis. “Or fiendish serpents? A fiend for Heloise to match her elfin hair.”

  “I think you are mixing up Jupiter and the Devil.” Matillis crossed herself for good measure. “And no more talk of the Rushdens.”

  “I just pray Sir Dudley thwacks them right out of the shire.” Nurse grabbed another stocking from her basket. “Them Rushdens are said to be murderous thieves to have truck with and the heir as ugly as sin and a cold-hearted knave withal, but leastways your father has a temper on him hot as Tewkesbury mustard and it will be a brave man who will cross him.”

  “Or woman,” muttered Heloise.

  Nurse set down her mending. “You poor sweeting,” she clucked. “ ’Twas not fair you took the brunt of it this morning. Well, never you mind, there’s a good man out there somewhere for you, mark my words.”

  “Is there, Nurse?” For once, Heloise did not hide her feelings. “Must my fortunes depend on finding a husband? I hate the way the world is tilted so that fathers and husbands have all the authority. They treat us as though we are breeding stock to be sold at market.” She might have added more but the horns sounded and a chorus of barking heralded Sir Dudley’s return.

  “Well, I am back,” he exclaimed, striding into the silent solar some moments later, two grinning hounds, reeking with pond water, at his heels.

  “Yes, we can see that, sir,” muttered Dionysia, swishing her new skirts out of the dogs’ path. Heloise stepped in front to shield her and shooed the beasts to the hearth where they settled appreciatively. At least her father could have ordered the servants to sluice them down but he clearly had another matter foremost in his mind, for he was wearing a familiar, smug expression that usually boded ill. Warming his hands behind his back at the fire, he beamed at them like a general about to announce a victory.

  “You would have been proud of me, my wenches. The bailiff was right. We came across Rushden trying to force rent from the villagers and when I demanded he depart, he had the hide to call me a scoundrel and a disgrace to the shire. It was so close to the alehouse that half the village heard him. There was nothing for it but to toss my glove at him.” His eyes lingered on his new wife. Matillis was beaming admiration—at least on the outside.

  “You challenged him to combat!” Heloise stared at her parent in disbelief. His anatomy could hardly be described as muscular. Puny might be a better word.

  “Indeed, I did.” Sir Dudley’s grin was as gleeful as the Devil’s signing up a soul. “That man is a traitor to the king’s grace if ever I saw one. Scratch the fellow and I will wager you will find a Lancaster sympathizer. The cur looked daggers at me when I said I had King Edward’s favor and had supped with Lord Hastings. Just because I was knighted in a palace, whoresons like Rushden think they can sneer at me. Well, tomorrow at noon that plaguey fellow shall learn that I am not a man to bear insults lightly.”

  “Lord Rushden never picked up the gauntlet, surely?” Heloise exclaimed.

  “Indeed he did. Went as red as a cock’s wattle with every jack man of ’em watching and agreed to meet me tomorrow at the edge of the wood outside the village of Oakwood, a mile from here. Potters Field, it is called. You need not gape at me like that, all of you. Rushden’s sword is rusty in its scabbard, mark my words. The fellow is at least sixty. Stooping and stupid.”

  Useless to tell her father this was utter lunacy. Humiliating a baron of ancient noble family! Oh, not only would this intensify the quarrel over Bramley, but it would send all the local nobles flocking to Rushden’s banner. The Ballasters would be shunned like lepers. Oh, why must he bluster so? Challenging an enemy to personal combat belonged to the make-believe world of Sir Lancelot.

  “You had better put in some sword practice after dinner, sir,” Dionysia suggested lightly, her covert glance at Heloise implying she thought their father would find some excuse before the morrow. But this issue was more than skin deep; not only was it about old nobility versus new money, it was political too.

  “Pah, you do not imagine that I shall fight Lord Phillip. Sir Hubert can be my champion, of course.”

  “Will Sir Hubert agree to this?” Heloise queried. Her sire’s retainer was a galumphing, good-natured old carouser with the frame of a colossus and the brain of a caterpillar! Oh to be sure he would!

  “Aye, of course, and don’t you go a-meddling, trying to make him say no, girl! It is about blessed time he paid me back for all the ale and victuals over the years.”

  It was despicable of him to load his quarrel onto poor Sir Hubert. This was not a matter of little boys playing with wooden swords. “Please, sir,” Heloise protested, risking a scolding. “I have a fearful feeling about this and it is foolish to . . .” Sh
e faltered as the humor ebbed from her father’s face.

  “A fool, am I?” He snatched up some discarded sewing and shoved it at her. “Keep to your stitching, girl, and mind your manners.” Thrusting up her hands defensively, she winced as the needle in the fabric jabbed her. “Changeling!” he sneered. “No wonder her grace of Gloucester could not find a suitor for you. You want to take care that Holy Church doesn’t get to hear of your babblings and lock you up.”

  Or worse.

  “Giving your opinions,” he continued, “sticking your nose into men’s affairs, mouthing tomfoolery. At least she”—he grabbed Dionysia’s wrist and jerked her towards him—“she has the sense to keep a still tongue in her head and please a man.” Then his foul temper abated, his breathing steadied. He gave his new wife a reassuring glance but there was no kindness for his oldest daughter. “Go and talk to the faeries, Heloise. Ask them if they will have you back.”

  “PICKLED AS A SOUSED HERRING,” MUTTERED MARTIN, SIR Dudley’s groom, next morning at dawn as he stood gloomily with his master and Heloise, staring down at Sir Hubert’s great bulk snoring on the straw of the byre. “Sir ’Ubert couldn’t slay a flea between his thumbs let alone bestride a horse this morning. What’s to be done, master? On my faith, I’ve tried burnt feathers and slappin’ ’im but we’ll not have ’im sober in time.” As if to add emphasis, the rooster pattering on the tiles above their heads opened his throat and shrieked.

  For answer, Heloise’s sire picked up a pail of water and hurled its freezing contents at the knight’s head, but Sir Hubert merely rolled over like a happy dog.

  “God damn you!” fumed her father. “This is your fault, girl! You should have kept the old fool sober.” He strode out into the yard. “Bring my breakfast to my bedchamber and announce that I have been taken ill with the measles.”

  “But our family honor . . .” Horrified, Heloise grabbed up fistfuls of her skirts and hurried along beside him.

  He halted to glare at her. “What if I truly had the measles and were fevered and delirious?”

  “That would be acceptable, sir.” She shivered, wishing they might finish the argument indoors.

  “Amen to that. I truly have the measles.”

  “Oh, sir.” Martin dutifully snatched off his cap to address his employer, delaying him further. “Forgive me sayin’ so, but folks’ll say you are craven if you do not fight this mornin’.”

  “Then Bramley shall close its ears to the gossip. You will inform the household I am contagious, daughter. Now see to my breakfast!”

  “But if you eat heartily, sir, they will think—”

  “Cease whining, you useless creature, and make sure the beef is not overcooked at dinnertime nor the mustard runny.”

  “I know my duty, sir,” she flared and slackened pace lest he cuff her.

  “Fie, your mother’s father would turn in his grave at such behavior,” muttered Martin, shaking his head at Sir Dudley’s back. “ ’Tis not the way of the nobility.”

  “I know it.” Heloise led Martin into the warmth of the kitchen, her thoughts skittering over the consequences as she gave orders to the kitchen servants for breakfast. The groom was right: once the gossip rippled out, her sisters would fetch no husbands, poor Matillis would be shunned, and they would never ever find acceptance among the Somerset nobility. She rubbed her hands before the fire, wondering how she might amend matters. If Lord Rushden was elderly, she would wager her best gown that he would hardly be spoiling for a fight on a bleak morning. It was fit to snow again out there.

  “Try the pottage, mistress,” pleaded their head cook. “The master threw it over poor Thomas yester morn.”

  Heloise took a long-handled spoon and dipped it into the pot suspended over the embers. “What if I dress in Father’s armor and go in his stead?” she whispered to Martin and paused in her ladling. Could she? Dare she?

  “Nay, mistress,” he protested, clapping a hand to his balding pate, but the outrageous idea tempted Heloise as she set a small loaf of fresh white bread beside the bowl upon a wooden platter.

  “But, Martin, it might serve.”

  The groom hastened after her as she carried the tray into the great hall and waylaid her at the foot of the wooden staircase leading to her father’s chamber.

  “Godsakes, mistress, a gentlewoman cannot do such a thing.”

  “Why not? I have my father’s inches and if I keep the visor down, no one need know. I will write an apology here and bear it with me so you may carry it across to Lord Rushden at the field and there is an end to the business, save”—she glanced towards the upper room—“Father will have me beaten for it but . . .”

  The groom looked as though he was struggling against an apoplexy. “If you are discovered,” he spluttered, the wooden banister wobbling precariously. “The scandal, mistress. It will be worse than cowardice. Your honor—”

  “Since my father tells me I shall never find a man to offer for me, it does not worry me, but you are right, we must take care to keep this secret. What matters is that my sisters shall one day find worthy husbands and escape his temper.”

  “But what if you have to fight, mistress?”

  She sensed the faeries listening, hidden high in the beams of the hall, and felt no disapproval. “It will not come to that.” Besides, she had watched combat practice at Middleham with the other maids of honor, and years ago Sir Hubert had let her test the feel of a sword and shown her a few tricks when he was teaching her cousins. Her instincts told her this was right. Even sensible Martin was wavering. “Will you help me, Martin? Set out my father’s armor, saddle Sir Hubert’s destrier, and come with me as my esquire? Oh, please . . . and pray you, say nothing to my father. Will you do it?”

  “Aye, mistress, fool that I am.”

  “DOES NO HARM FOR A NOBLEWOMAN TO KNOW WHAT A HUSBAND must carry into battle,” Sir Hubert had once said to the giggling Ballaster maidens when they had been trying on his plumed jousting helm. But today it was not just the helm. Inwardly Heloise trembled like a maiden about to be sacrificed to a dragon; outwardly she pretended serenity as Martin gradually buckled on piece after piece of steel over the quilted brigandine and leggings. Not all the pieces matched, but with one of the servant’s tabards tugged down over her chest and hips, only an expert would have noticed.

  Save for her heels, every clattering inch of her was encased in metal, from shiny insteps to the polished gorget about her neck. She felt extremely protected until she tried to move and found her limbs stiff, slow and weighted as if her body were remote and it needed a carrier pigeon to reach her fingertips with the message to bend her gauntleted fingers round Sir Hubert’s sword handle.

  “If this t’were a tournament, the winner might demand your armor and your horse,” Martin clucked after fastening the old knight’s belt about her. They had guiltily made extra holes in the leather to keep it from slipping down over the tassets that encased Heloise’s thighs. “Easy now.” His young lady was wobbling precariously on the small upturned barrel and he steadied it so she might step across into the saddle.

  “There will not be any tournament,” Heloise muttered.

  “Don’t you change your mind, mistress, after all this labor.” He heaved her leg across the shiny leather and then handed up the helm. “Aye,” he said, noting her grimace, “riding astride will be strange for you but I’ll keep good hold of the leading rein and Chivalry’s a valiant beast.”

  She lowered the helmet over her coif and clanked down the visor. Instantly the wintry world was reduced to muffled sounds; her vision to a horizontal slit. The inside air about her face was damp from her breath yet stifling, and she swiftly pushed the grille up again, preferring the chill wind on her cheeks. So this was what it felt like to ride into battle. God help her, it was like carrying three large sacks of grain. Well, such torture might be preferable to being pierced by a fatal arrow on the bloody fields of Wakefield or Towton, but this was agony.

  BY THE TIME THEY EMERGED FROM THE WO
ODLAND TRACK, the clouded sky was tinged with orange, promising sleet to impair Heloise’s vision even further. And they were late. Unfamiliar with the roads, they had missed the track to Oakwood and had to turn around. Potters Field proved to be a fist of cleared land thrusting into the woodland at the edge of a common. No doubt Lord Rushden had chosen it for its flatness. A ditch drained it on one side, a hedgerow edged it on the other, and a small scatter of bleating sheep were glaring at the horsemen that huddled within the fringe of oak and hazel. To the side of the track just before it ventured into the wood stood a dilapidated hovel, and tethered to the small broken-down manger propped against its wall was a donkey. A plump little man, clad in a long houppelande, emerged from inside, rubbing his hands up and down his forearms to keep warm. Seeing Heloise, he hallooed the Rushden company, and they immediately rode out into the open.

  As she identified her foe through the grille of her beaked visor, Heloise found her courage ebbing. Lord Rushden sat straight-backed in the saddle, his formidable visor already down. Even though she knew the steel shell hid a crabbed and elderly man, her enemy looked unnaturally huge, terrible, and incredibly defiant. The black rondels on his argent surcote seemed to be taunting her like arcane eyes across the meadow, and then as Heloise drew closer she recognized the circles’ imperfections—they were coiled serpents. Two of his henchmen were laughing at his groom’s efforts to shoo the unshorn sheep through the gate to the side of the meadow. The fat man caught at his stirrup by the hovel but her enemy took no notice; his gaze was firmly fixed on her.

  “Take him the apology, Martin.”

  The groom grimly ran across the grass that separated them. Heloise saluted haughtily as Lord Rushden raised his head from scanning the parchment, and then she gasped. This was the nightmare at Middleham when she had fallen from the bed! The black knight! Of all the fools in Christendom! God protect her! She had invited herself to her own death!