At the King's Command

by Susan Wiggs

  One day at the peak of high summer, she came out of her office and nearly collided with Stephen in the open, colonnaded passageway. It was chilling the way he managed to look through her—as if she had no more substance than air.

  “My lady,” he said, inclining his head.

  She tried not to notice how the sun struck his hair, tried not to notice the muscular shape of his legs. He wore plain hose and boots and tunic, for he worked as hard as any of his tenants. The day was warm, and the tunic was unlaced to the middle of his chest, revealing tanned skin glistening with sweat. Nonplussed, she looked into his eyes. The coldness there stopped her rising passion.

  “Good day, my lord,” she said.

  For a moment, they stood facing each other. What could she possibly say to a man who had wed her so unwillingly, a man who preferred the company of doxies and gamblers to her own?

  He seemed to have the same thought, for he nodded and stepped into his own offices. Juliana stood in the passageway, absently greeting the tenants who arrived to discuss their affairs with the lord of the manor.

  They cloaked their curiosity about her in deference, tugging a forelock while greeting her, then stepping into the office. For a time, she stood listening to the murmur of voices inside, the occasional ripple of male laughter.

  Stephen was at ease with these people; he liked them and treated them fairly. She found herself thinking of her father, and a sudden sharp stab of yearning caught her unawares.

  It was that ache of loneliness that made her enter the office after the tenants had left.

  “Yes?” he asked without looking up. “What is it?”

  “I … wanted to speak to you.”

  He glanced up swiftly, and the chill mask slid over his features. In that moment he resembled a marble god she had seen in the gardens of Richmond Palace. “Juliana, what do we possibly have to talk about?”

  I want to know you better. I want to know your sadness and your anger. And, God help me, I want to see you smile.

  She refused to be cowed by his brusque manner. Trying to appear nonchalant, she wandered to the middle of the room. “What are the markings on this table?” she asked, running her hand over the checkered surface.

  “It makes tallying the accounts easier. I put markers on the squares to represent the sums. The notched markers stand for ten times the amount on the board.”

  She had always excelled at ciphering. “I could tally sums for you, and have no need of checkers and notches.”

  “I prefer to use the table.”

  “My lord, it is no great shame to admit you are deficient in—”

  “I have my deficiencies,” he cut in, “but not in ciphering. I use the table so my tenants can see each calculation. It puts their minds at ease.”

  “Oh.” Had her father been a compassionate landlord? She could not remember. Self-conscious now, she walked over to a side table. “And what are these?” she asked, fascinated by the array of delicate-looking metal instruments.

  Suddenly he was beside her, coming up swiftly and quietly, startling her. “Calipers for measuring bore sizes,” he said. “And this is a scale. It’s far more accurate than the brass balance used by most.”

  She glanced sideways at him. “You made all these things, didn’t you?”

  “Aye.”

  She thought of all the little conveniences she had noticed about the manor—a heat-driven spit in the kitchen, a lamp in a bowl of water to magnify the light, a rolling ladder in the larder, the conduits that carried water throughout the house. “Why?”

  “I made them because I saw a need.”

  “You—” she frowned, retrieving he word “—you invented them. You have a marvelous talent, my lord.”

  “These are practical devices. I wouldn’t call making them so great a gift.” Turning sharply, he went back to the exchequer’s table.

  A tentative knock sounded at the door, and Stephen hastened to let in the caller.

  A woman in a homespun gown and bare feet shuffled slowly, hesitantly, into the office. One of her thin arms was looped through the handle of a willow withe basket.

  “Mistress Shane?” Stephen asked, his voice soft and gentle as if he had not just spoken so harshly to Juliana.

  The shawl-covered head nodded, and she raised her eyes. Juliana’s interest was caught by Mistress Shane’s milk-pale skin, her hollowed cheeks, and deep, dark eyes. “Aye. Forgive the intrusion, my lord. I should have come when the others did, but—” A mewling cry came from the basket. She jiggled it, and the babe quieted. “The little one was fussy.”

  “Where’s your husband, mistress?” Stephen asked.

  “Died, he did, while you was gone to see the king.”

  Juliana watched in astonishment as compassion transformed her husband into a different man. His oak-hewn features changed, softened. His eyes warmed as he came around the table and took the young woman’s hand as if she were the grandest of noblewomen.

  “Sit down, mistress.”

  She lowered herself to the stool and settled the basket in her lap.

  “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  “It weren’t rightly your problem, my lord.”

  Stephen’s breath caught. “Why in God’s name would you say that? How could you think I wouldn’t care?”

  “Tell us what happened,” said Juliana.

  The woman drew a deep breath, and Juliana recognized the shaking quality of it, the trembling effort to conquer grief. She had felt it so many times herself.

  “ ’Twas a fever. The same one what carried off me eldest boy a month before.”

  Juliana could tell Stephen had not been informed of that death, either. She pitied the reeve who was charged with keeping him informed of the tenants’ doings.

  “What sort of fever?” His voice sounded different. Harsh. As if invisible hands were strangling him.

  Mistress Shane lifted her shadow-rimmed eyes. “ ’Twas the lung fever, my lord.”

  The effect of the words on Stephen was startling. Juliana took his hand. His was rough and dry and cold. “Stephen?”

  He seemed to shake himself then, blinking and all but ripping his hand from her grasp. “Mistress Shane, I deeply regret your loss. What land did your husband hold?”

  “Three sections and a bit of water meadow by the river, my lord.”

  “Your rents are waived until further notice.”

  “Thank you, my lord!” She grabbed his hand and covered it with kisses.

  Juliana thought he would snatch it away; he was so uncomfortable with displays of affection. But he stood still. With his free hand he lifted the woman’s face and peered into her eyes.

  “You’ll need help with the work.”

  “But, my lord, there is no one.”

  “There are a dozen able-bodied men camped by the river,” Juliana said gently.

  Stephen frowned. “The gypsies mislike working the land. ’Tis too constant for their natures.”

  “Gypsies!” Mistress Shane clutched the basket too her bosom. “They steal babies. I’ve heard they eats them and—”

  “I assure you, they do not,” Juliana said quickly. “And while gypsies do not like to work the land—” she sent Stephen a pointed look “—the men of Laszlo’s tribe will help you.”

  The woman sought Stephen’s gaze. “Is it true, my lord?”

  He hesitated a moment, then said, “We’ll see that you get your work done.”

  With a flurry of thanks and bobbing curtsies, she left. Juliana looked inquisitively at Stephen. “That was kind of you.”

  “Better to keep the land productive.” He cleared his throat and turned to shuffle some papers on his desk.

  Juliana hid a secret smile. Let him pretend he acted out of sheer pragmatism. She glanced at the estate map pegged to the wall over the table. “This is Lynacre?” she asked.

  He nodded absently. The map showed the great bend in the river Avon, the curve that marked the fertile meadows the tenants occupied. It was
fringed in fields and woods stamped with a portcullis device.

  “What is this?” she asked.

  “The king’s hunting preserve.”

  “It takes up more than half the estate.”

  “Aye.”

  “And it simply lies idle unless the king wishes to hunt?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Such a shameful waste.” She traced her finger over Lynacre Hall, its H shape with the great chamber flanked by two gabled ends. Some distance away, there was a patch of empty green space. “What garden is this?”

  “A forest.” A tic of impatience started in his jaw.

  “Where does it lead?” Juliana asked, pressing on.

  “Nowhere. ’Tis long overgrown and useless even for hunting. No one ever goes there.”

  “Oh. Thank you for telling Mistress Shane about the gypsies,” she said. Anything, please God, but this terrible silence. Anything to move him to something other than complete indifference.

  He shot her a narrow-eyed look. “Does that surprise you?”

  “Yes,” she snapped, suddenly sick of his apathy. “As a matter of fact, it does, my lord. I was beginning to believe you had no heart at all.”

  In two strides he sprang across the room and faced her, close enough to kiss her. “Believe me, Juliana.” His voice was taut with icy control. “Where you are concerned, I have no heart. My only burning desire is to see you gone.”

  She stared hard at his face, into his eyes. And there she saw the pain. The lie. The secrets.

  It gave her the courage to touch him, to rest her palm on his cheek for a moment. “What is it, Stephen? What is it that tears at your heart, that makes you so tender with a grieving widow, so patient with Kit as he fumbles at the quintain and the archery butts? And then so callous with me?”

  He flinched and drew away. “Damn you for a meddlesome busybody,” he said. Then, turning on his heel, he stormed from the room.

  Seven

  No matter how fast he rode, Stephen could not escape the demons. Still he tried. Still he punished his beautiful swift mare at a brutal pace, needing no spurs save his own voice to urge Capria to her greatest speed.

  Across the greening landscape she carried him, over windswept fells and scrubby downs. To the barren chalk heights and then down again. Dizzying leaps across streams and hedgerows and terraced fences of stone.

  He found no escape. Even as the perils of hard riding leaped up around him, his mind clung to her image: Juliana, with her rich gleaming hair tumbling about her shoulders and her eyes on fire with wanting him, wanting his secrets, wanting his soul.

  His heart slammed like a hammer against his breastbone. At last he knew what he feared.

  That he could love again.

  No. No. No. He pounded his heels against the mare’s sides. He drove her down to a hidden place that reminded him of exactly who he was and what he had done. A place that would help him freeze his emotions and keep his feelings for Juliana from devouring him whole.

  When he reached his destination he was panting as if he, and not the mare, had raced for miles.

  He threw the reins around a tree branch and approached the secluded spot. Aye, she was there, waiting for him, as always. Never changing, ever patient, biding her time. Sometimes he was able to stay away for weeks at a time and to go for days without thinking of her. But always he succumbed to her allure, her dark patience, her irresistible secrets.

  Stephen was sweating now, his breath coming in great gusting pants as he fell to his knees before her, a supplicant begging indulgence from a deity.

  He whispered her name, loud and harsh in the shadowy stillness. “Meg!”

  Juliana used a sidesaddle when she rode. Her request for a lane saddle had scandalized Stephen’s grooms. She thought it rather silly to ride sideways on a horse, but she gamely hooked her leg over the cantle, relaxed against the hindbow, and slapped the reins of the big dun mare.

  “Let me escort you, milady,” said Piers, tugging his forelock and gazing up at her with worshipful eyes.

  “Thank you. That will not be necessary.”

  “But ’tis not safe abroad, milady. The hills and forests, they be crawling with cutthroats and gypsies—” He clapped his hand over his mouth and turned as red as a cherry. “Forgive me, milady. I didn’t mean—”

  She summoned a smile. “Insults sting but a little when they stem from a man’s ignorance.” With that, she quirted the horse and trotted out of the stable yard.

  Stephen had told no one where he was going. He rarely did, or so the servants said, and he was never questioned. She followed his trail easily enough, finding the imprints of his mare’s hooves in the bruised earth freshly moistened by a rain shower at dawn.

  He had ridden hard and without direction for a time, leaping hedgerows and stiles and plunging through a wood.

  The signs grew more subtle, but still she found them. She had learned to read vurma from the gypsies; her sharp-eyed glance picked out a hoofprint here, a broken twig there.

  She emerged from the woods to find herself on a broad slope that led down to a meandering stream. The remote, unfamiliar area was lush with reeds and forget-me-nots.

  First she saw his horse tethered to a tree, placidly cropping at the clover and grass that grew thick and sweet in the spring-watered area.

  Then, as she dismounted, her jaw dropped. The reins fell from her numb fingers. The dun mare seized the moment to sidle away. Juliana started after her, but the mare was off, trotting back toward the manor. With a shrug, Juliana returned her attention to the place by the stream.

  The building was constructed of powdery yellow limestone. Though tiny, it had the same slim vertical lines that distinguished the large cathedrals at Salisbury and Westminster.

  Yet this one—a chapel, was it?—would fit inside the stillroom at Lynacre Hall. Perhaps it was a shrine of some sort.

  Filled with curiosity, she approached the chapel. It had only two small windows, no more than sidelights, actually, and a low-arched door that stood open.

  Swallows flitted in and out of the eaves. Stopping outside the doorway, she looked inside and saw Stephen in profile.

  He knelt with his head bowed, his clasped hands pressed to his brow. The light streaming through a high, cloverleaf-shaped window mantled him in gold.

  Juliana felt a slight chill and a lurch of her stomach. She did not want to intrude upon a man at prayer. And yet at the same time she felt drawn to him and entranced by his pain, his need.

  “Stephen?” She spoke his name softly.

  He snapped to attention, coming to his feet and moving in front of something—or someone—as if to hide it. Or her.

  “Is it not enough,” he asked in a curiously weary voice, “that I have given you my name, a roof over your head, plenty to eat, new clothes?”

  “No, Stephen. I do not suppose it is enough.”

  He seemed so huge in the small, shadowy space, the top of his head brushing the vaulted ceiling. And yet somehow, despite his size, despite the great golden strength of him, he looked vulnerable.

  “Why?” he asked, his voice a harsh echo in the cavelike chapel. “For the love of God, Juliana, why must you meddle? Ask prying questions, follow me on private errands?”

  She, too, had often wondered at her own insatiable curiosity about her husband. “Something about you cries out to me. I know we were thrown together. I know we were not supposed to concern ourselves with each other. But I cannot help it. I want to know everything about you.”

  “No, you don’t,” he shot back, his voice ringing with clear certainty. “You won’t like what you learn. Run along, Juliana.” She bit her lip, and he seemed to relent. “I have given you all I am capable of giving. Please don’t ask for more.”

  “Sometimes,” she said, summoning her courage, “sometimes in my life I have been forced to take without asking.” Before he could stop her, she entered the chapel.

  It housed a pair of large effigy plaques of a woman and a
small boy. The intricately molded brasswork was exquisite, set into the lids of two stone tombs.

  “Oh,” she whispered, cocking her head to view the brass more closely. Stephen’s wife Margaret, Lady Wimberleigh. The artist had depicted a fair Plantagenet beauty—the thick-lidded eyes, the lyrical, aquiline cheekbones and nose, the firm and shapely thin lips.

  Juliana said in a trembling voice, “I think it’s time you told me about her.” I want to know why you still come here seven years after she has gone. But she dared not go so far as to ask that.

  His big hands clutched the back of a prayer stool until his knuckles shone white. “What is the point?”

  “I am not certain. You are always so sad and distant. How much more can it hurt to talk about her?”

  He blew out his breath. Again, she was struck by the impression of weariness. Grieving, for him, was an exhausting business. “Her name was Margaret.” He spoke in lifeless tones and stared out the unglazed window, though his distant eyes seemed to see something other than the green hills and the treetops nodding in the breeze. “Lady Margaret Genet. I called her Meg. She was just fourteen when I married her, and I myself a mere fifteen.”

  Juliana nodded; her own match to Alexei Shuisky had been arranged mere hours after her birth. Margaret had grown up, wed and borne children before she had even reached Juliana’s present age. The thought raised a shiver up her spine.

  “So the marriage was planned by your parents.”

  “As is usually the case—when the king himself does not mandate it.”

  She refused to feel the barb of his words. “But you must have loved her.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  He spoke so harshly that Juliana stepped back, half-afraid he would strike out. He made a menacing picture in his tight leather breeches and blousy white shirt, his golden hair falling about his massive shoulders, his big hands so tight on the back of the prayer stool that she feared the wood might snap.