A Lady Under Siege

by B. G. Preston

  She knew he was talking about the wife he had lost. There was kindness in his eyes, and she sensed a movement within him, something stirring in his heart, as if goodness were a hibernating bear awakening there.

  “That’s a good way to live,” she said. “Is it your motto too?”

  “I try.”

  “So I can say something?”

  He nodded.

  “To Thomas?”

  Again he nodded.

  “Okay.” She took a deep breath. “It’s always hard to start,” she said. “I’ll just plunge in then. Thomas—I can plainly see you’re falling for her, and I can understand why. You’re vulnerable, and lonely, and she’s offering you a shoulder to cry on. She’s become kind and sweet, all the things you sincerely wish she would be. On top of it she’s grown more and more flirtatious, she’s playing the total temptress. But don’t forget I’m in her head, and I can feel everything she’s up to. All this playacting as if she likes you, and teasing you, this dancing for you, presenting her body and subtly offering it to you, well, in a way it’s fake, and in a way she was right to worry—it’s affecting her, she’s starting to waver, she’s starting to like you and be attracted to you, which might be a good thing except at the same time it’s making her crazy with guilt because it’s a total betrayal of her duty to her poor dead husband.” Meghan was aware she was starting to sound frantic, but she couldn’t slow the torrent of words. “I’m totally blown away by the strength of her loyalty and duty and honour that’s all bound up in a promise to her husband to kill you, and now she doesn’t really want to do it anymore but she feels like she must, and it’s driving her out of her mind! The sooner she does it the better—that’s what she’s thinking now, she absolutely must do it quickly before she loses her nerve! So Thomas—she still intends to kill you, I know you don’t see it, you see only a pair of lovely eyes gazing at you so seductively these past days and nights. She’s trying to get you to lower your guard. She’s planning to plant a knife in your back. So be careful!”

  Meghan caught her breath. She’d been addressing Thomas, but of course it was the friendly, slightly mocking face of Derek looking back at her. “Thank you for putting up with this,” she said.

  “You should really come in and sit down,” he said. “I’ll get you a glass of water. You look dehydrated.”

  “No, no, I’m fine,” she protested. She bent down to rummage in a satchel at her feet. “There’s one more thing I need to show you. To show Thomas.”

  “Come in, come in then. Here I thought you were done, now there’s visuals to go along with the audio.”

  She followed him into his living room, and from her satchel she pulled a colour photocopy of Artemisia Gentileschi’s painting of Judith and Holofernes, showing the gritty, indomitable heroine hacking away at her hapless victim’s neck. Blood flowed in rivulets down the white linen sheets. She handed the image to Derek. “Look at this. This is what she wants for you. For Thomas, I mean.”

  “That’s nasty,” Derek said.

  “Please be careful, Thomas,” Meghan continued imploringly. “I can tell you this much—she has a small knife now, one her maid brought from the kitchen. She intends to lure you to her bed, and give herself up to you, and then when you’re defenceless, and blind to everything but desire, she’ll stab you with the knife. The provocative dancing, the demure looks, all the seductive behaviour that’s put you under her spell, it’s an act. When she moons at you lovingly, it’s a falsehood. That’s the way you need to think of it.”

  “Sounds to me like the web’s been spun, and she’s already caught him.”

  “He is smitten,” Meghan agreed.

  “Men are helpless in the face of a good-looking woman who knows her power. She looks like you, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then he’s a dead man.”

  Meghan ignored the compliment. “I don’t want him to die. That’s why I’m warning him.”

  “If I were him I’d go for it,” Derek said. “Getting a woman to do all the work for once is like manna from heaven—there’s not a man alive who would pass that up.”

  “Don’t, Derek,” Meghan said curtly.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t mess around with this.”

  “I’m not, I’m not,” he insisted. “Listen, if he really is in my head, he might like to hear some advice, man to man, bro to bro.”

  Meghan looked doubtful.

  “Hey Thomas, go ahead, go for it,” he continued. “Let her lead you to the boudoir, bud. Let it get naked, and hot and heavy, so hot she won’t want to stop—”

  “Enough,” said Meghan sharply.

  He ignored her. “All you have to do is find the knife where she’s hidden it, toss it away before she can use it. She’ll break down and cry, and give up, that’s the best case scenario, and you’ll be right where you want to be to comfort her. Things’ll warm right back up.”

  “He’s not that callous, or shallow,” Meghan said.

  “Oh please. He’s a man, I’m a man. I know how men think. A woman who tempts and teases him every chance she gets, so she can try to kill him, but now—thanks to you—he knows she doesn’t really want to kill him, and is actually attracted to him? That’s the hottest of the hot! Irresistible! He’ll be so stoked to have her, it’ll be like nuclear fucking fusion!”

  “Stop it,” Meghan said. “If he takes the knife away, she won’t go through with it.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “You forget I’m in her head. I know exactly how she visualizes it—she’ll feel for the knife as soon as she gets into the bed, but won’t use it until the right moment. Mabel has convinced her not to bring out the knife until the moment of his climax, because a man is lost just then, he’s at his weakest, most helpless.”

  “Petit mort, the little death,” Derek said. “To be followed this time by the big death.”

  “No no no,” she protested. “There won’t be any death. Thomas, I’m warning you. You’ve got the facts now, the full information. Do not do it!”

  “You’re too late. You said yourself he’s falling for her,” Derek replied. “Has he tried to kiss her already?”

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  “There you go, then.”

  “It was as a way of thanking me. He wanted to kiss me.”

  “He wanted to kiss you?”

  “Out of gratitude. For helping with his daughter. He asked Sylvanne if he could embrace her, and kiss her, so that I could feel it.”

  “And did you?”

  “Well, he held her head in his hands, and it was three light pecks, really. Here, here, and here.” She touched her two cheeks and forehead. “Then she took his hand, and kissed his fingers. He pulled back as if she’d held them to the flame.”

  “But his kisses—did you feel them?”

  “I think so.”

  “So what did it feel like, to be kissed by someone, when you’re inside someone else’s head?”

  “It felt real. That’s all I can say. It was as real as any kiss I’ve ever had. When he looked into her eyes I felt like he was looking straight into my eyes. Her eyes were the window to my soul, if that’s not too weird.”

  “I think you have a crush,” Derek said.

  “Don’t say it like that,” she reproached him.

  “I can’t believe women sometimes,” Derek laughed. “Here you are with the hots for the guy, and if he makes love to this woman you’ll feel it, and you’re telling him don’t go for it.”

  “I’m telling him to be kind to her, and not to get himself killed.”

  “Sylvanne’s doing everything short of a striptease to get the guy between the sheets,” Derek asserted. “Let the dude have his fun, let him express his love to you, and who knows? Nothing’s written in stone. Sylvanne might come around. She sounds like she’s on the verge of coming around.”

  “I just want him to be careful,” Meghan said softly. She had the sudden sensation of longing stirring
inside her, like a tendril of new life erupting from an ancient seed. She wanted to nurture and encourage this feeling, to bring it to the light and examine it, but not here, standing before Derek in his shabby living room. “I really have to go.”

  “Keep me posted,” Derek said.

  “It’s not a joke,” she said. “It’s real.”

  “Then I should be jealous of you, and of Thomas. You get to experience reality, I only hear about it second hand.”

  “I know. Sorry. I always leave here apologizing to you.”

  “Don’t be sorry for hogging the reality, I have enough of my own, thank you. You’re the one with too much.”

  33

  Mabel was crossing the yard, escorted by a guardsman as usual to collect the supper, when she chanced upon Lord Thomas, who was tutoring three young pages in the martial techniques of the broadsword. He greeted her warmly as she was led by, and she asked if she might have a few moments of his time, to speak to him on a matter of great import. Thomas handed his sword to her startled guardsman, and bade him take charge of the lesson, while he led Mabel to a quiet room in the armoury, where weapons of all sorts were stacked against the walls. “Now my dear, what so heavily weighs upon your mind?” he asked her.

  “Master, I must warn you, in confidence,” Mabel told him solemnly, “that despite her warm and gracious behaviour toward you these last days, m’Lady still harbours ill will toward you.”

  Thomas smiled upon her. “I thank you for being so forthcoming,” he replied. “But you may spare me the details, for I already know them.”

  “How’s that, sire?” she asked, greatly surprised.

  “You procured for her a small knife, and the lady has hidden it in some convenient nook at her bedside. She intends to make an offer to me of her body, that I might use her as I wish, and then stab me as I lie with her upon the bed. Is that how the play is written? A bit of theatre requiring her to act two parts, lover and killer, while I play a single role: the willing dupe. The only wrinkle in the plot that remains unknown to me is whether she’ll let me have my way with her first, so as to stab me as I lie defenceless, cloudy-headed and impoverished of strength after the act, or will she strike earlier than that, and thus maintain her honour?”

  “You’re a wizard, Sire,” cried Mabel in astonishment.

  “If I be a wizard, it’s only for good, I hope. But tell me, why do you abandon loyalty to your Lady, and turn traitor at this hour?”

  “I’m no traitor, Sir,” Mabel protested. “It’s for the Lady’s good. Forgive me for speaking so directly, but the way I see it, if you were to succeed in joining with her, and if through this union you were to plant a seed inside her, then she might come to forget her other sorrows, for when the child is born, she’ll be won over to it through maternal love. And as it grows, and takes on some of your own good looks, she’ll likewise be won over to you.”

  “So it’s your sincere wish that I join with her, and possess her?”

  “It would be for the best, Sire.”

  “Your reasoning pretends an altruistic spirit, but wizardry apart, plain old gossip informs me you have ambitions for your own future.”

  Mabel blushed, but answered him assertively. “I want my freedom, Sir,” she declared. “My life back home is over, and there is one who desires me here.”

  “Gwynn the poultryman, if I’m not mistaken.”

  She nodded.

  “Good luck to you,” Thomas wished her. “His first wife gave him three boys, and birthing the third is what killed her, so he’s predisposed to gratitude toward womankind for that sacrifice. You’ll benefit from it, and he’ll be patient and tender in his treatment of you, not wanting to lose another. You speak of wanting freedom. Well I do warn you, trading the certitudes of service to your Lady for an independent life as wife of a freeman is no guaranteed improvement, especially when those three untamed young boys of his show every sign of growing up to be even bigger rascals than their old man. However, if you do succeed in domesticating father and sons, you’ll have performed a great service to the community, and in expectation of that outcome I hereby promise that you shall have your freedom soon. Gwynn shall have his wife.”

  MABEL RETURNED TO HER Lady’s chambers with the supper and found Sylvanne looking out dreamily from the window.

  “Ah, there you are. What kept you?”

  “I was waylaid, Ma’am.”

  “Hmm. Look how early in the day the moon has chosen to show herself in the sky. Look how full and round she is.”

  Mabel came to the window and saw that it was true, the moon hung round and swollen in the east while the autumn sun had yet to set over fields and forest. Below them, a peasant’s fat cow had wandered into the bulrushes of the moat, the wooden bell around its neck making a lovely, earthy chime. To Mabel the serenity of the moment was marred only by the breeze that blew in through the unshuttered window. It was cool, and hinted of winter coming.

  “This night feels right,” Sylvanne said. “This is the very night we must strike, Mabel. Have them fetch hot water, for first I must bathe, then be anointed in something fragrant, then adorn myself as finely as that ancient Jewess who slew a general. Tonight I’ll coax Thomas from his daughter’s bedside, and induce him to return here with me.”

  “Good for you, Madame!”

  “I must tell you something first, though. I’ve had a change of heart, a change of strategy. Rather than having you absent yourself, I want you here, in your bed. You be discreet, and make as to be asleep when we arrive,” she instructed. “You’ll hear us, and, peeking out from your anteroom, you’ll ascertain the precise moment when he lies with me, and begins to lose himself in his attentions to me. Creep close, without a sound—raise the knife, bring it down!”

  Sylvanne could not fail to notice the look of horror on Mabel’s face. “Please Mabel, I need you,” she pleaded. “You’re stronger than I am. I don’t trust myself to do it alone. I’ll hold him tight, and you thrust the knife.”

  “Oh no, Ma’am,” Mabel stammered. “Not me. You.”

  “You told me you’d do anything for me.”

  “But not that. Not murder. The man has been so kind to us and all—what if he howls in pain, or begs for mercy?”

  “The same man murdered my husband. He deserves his head on a pike above the barbican gate,” Sylvanne stated. But the words came out flat, neutral, and to Mabel’s ears lacked conviction.

  “Oh Madame. Is that truly how you feel?”

  “It’s not a question of how I feel, it’s a question of justice. What matters is justice be done,” Sylvanne said, her voice quavering.

  “Forgive me for insufficient intensity of feeling, Ma’am,” Mabel pleaded. “To kill a man needs passion stronger than I possess. If you feel it, you must do it.”

  Sylvanne shuddered deeply. “You’re right, of course you’re right. It’s up to me, isn’t it?” She was lost in thought a moment, then looked directly into Mabel’s eyes. “I owe you an apology—I’m so frightened of failure that I tried to pass my own solemn duty into your blameless hands!”

  “There, there, Madame,” Mabel said soothingly. “Are you starting to have feelings for the Master and his young daughter? I shouldn’t be surprised if you are.”

  “Don’t talk of feelings, please,” Sylvanne pleaded. “I’m bound by duty, and without fulfilling it what am I? I need to remember my duty. I need to trust myself. I need to believe that in the moment I will find the strength.”

  “That’s more like it, Madame,” Mabel said encouragingly. “You lure him to your bed, and lie with him upon it, and then, when he weakens after gaining his, his, when he takes rest afterward, he’ll be sure to lie undefended. He’ll be at your mercy, he will! That’s the time to strike. That’s the plan we hatched. Let’s stick to that.”

  “That’s the plan you hatched,” Sylvanne responded. “But it’s not you who must make a sacrifice.” When she tried to picture how it would play out, to imagine the moment, her mind was overwhe
lmed by complexities of emotion. “Could I really be with him like that, arousing passion in him, persuading him to satisfy himself upon me, and not find myself susceptible to being…” She groped for the right word.

  “Swept along, Madame?”

  A new thought came to Sylvanne, and she eyed Mabel suspiciously. “It’s funny, that you, an old virgin, are suddenly so full of advice about my comportment in bed,” she said. “Not for the first time you express your preference that I let him have me before I strike. Why is that, Mabel? I’m frightened of the entire scenario, yet you fear only half—you’re keen that I take him to bed, yet less enthused to see him dead. Perhaps I should worry about you, that you might call out and alert him, for as you’ve said yourself, the man’s been so kind to us.”

  “Oh no, ma’am. I wouldn’t. I would never alert him.”

  “I wonder if you already have.”

  AFTER HER BATH SYLVANNE arranged her hair up high upon her head, so as to show her lovely neck to its full effect. She anointed herself with perfume from a bottle that had belonged to Thomas’ wife, a scent that pleased her greatly, with hints of leather and rose petal. She chose a kirtle of red velvet with white linen cuffs, and above its revealingly low bodice she arrayed a silver necklace of sapphires that had been an extravagant wedding present from Gerald. When Mabel told her she looked stunning, she knew it wasn’t sycophancy but the unadorned truth. Appraising herself in the looking glass she found that beauty gave her courage. She thought, in my raiment at least I have equalled that Biblical heroine Judith. Now if only I might equal her in action. But then doubts troubled her mind, for she knew the two circumstances were not identical. She thought, fair Judith had as motivation the rescue of an entire besieged city at risk of slaughter, while I, by comparison, seek merely to kill a widowed man who struggles to preserve his daughter. She did her best to drive from her mind such unhelpful small treasons, and focus on two simple thoughts. Tonight is to be the night. Do your duty.

  SOON AFTER DARK THE summons came as usual, and she was escorted to Daphne’s bedroom. She arrived fully prepared to enliven the evening, to play sultry temptress and spark the heart of Lord Thomas, but on entering the room, she saw that the mood was sombre, and muted, with the candles dimmed. Daphne slept in the bed, and Thomas brooded in a chair close to her.