Lord Gerard then swung his satchel from his shoulder and lifted the flap to remove a small covered crock, a forged cup, several metal utensils of various sharpness, and a leather kit that perhaps at one time had contained a gentleman’s toilette essentials, being quite finely tooled, but which now Dori suspected held other things.
She looked up at him as he arranged things. “Where did you get all this?”
“The things in my satchel are my own,” he said absently, as though she didn’t deserve his attention. “The others I scavenged from the village. There wasn’t much left in the abandoned houses. I’m certain whoever stayed behind took whatever remained that suited their needs. But I’d wager we’ll have enough to get by.”
Dori was impressed; the things he’d brought, broken and worn as they were, seemed like treasures to her after living so long in the oratory without little comforts. He shrugged out of his wet cloak and hung it on a peg likely meant for the priest’s stole and added even more wood to the crackling fire before returning to the table.
She watched him as he began to break off pieces of the dried herbs and sprinkle them in the metal cup, where they slid to the rounded bottom with little shivers of sound. Then he unwrapped one of the fish and, taking hold of one of the slender bladed knives, deftly severed the head and peeled the spine from the flesh before folding it into the cup atop the herbs. He loosened the cover from the crock to reveal jagged rocks of cloudy salt, of which he chose a piece and added it to the cup.
Then he picked up the wooden tankard and walked to the hearth, where he dipped it into the water bucket to below the crack. He returned to the table and poured the water over the ingredients in the metal cup and mixed the contents with the blade of his knife. The utensil made a sharp ringing sound when Lord Gerard tapped it on the cup and Dori startled a bit, realizing that the growing heat of the room and the graceful surety with which the man moved had enchanted her for a time.
He picked up a square, handleless blade and placed it atop the cup before returning to the hearth with it. He dragged the stool before the warming blaze and sat down, reaching out to snuggle the cup into the graying coals on the edge of the fire. Then he rested his elbows on his knees, held his palms toward the fire, and seemed to forget she was in the room.
Dori stood at the table staring at his darkened outline for several moments, feeling the heat of the fire seeping into her bones and making her flesh feel heavy. Even her toes were beginning to warm. Constantine Gerard obviously had no use for her at this time, now that he’d made his soup and was waiting for it to cook. She glanced behind her at the bench, the embroidered cloth beckoning to her.
A moment later, she had curled up on her side as soundlessly as she could, pulling the cloth around her and using her bent arm for a pillow. The comfort of the coverlet in the warm chamber nearly made her moan with pleasure. She stared at Lord Gerard’s back as her eyelids grew heavy, realizing that, for the first time since coming to Benningsgate, she needn’t fear anyone finding her, intruding upon her secret shelter. He wasn’t her friend; he wasn’t her savior; he wasn’t even her ally really. But she somehow knew she was safer now than she had been for several months. He might not go out of his way to protect her from an intruder, but he would certainly defend what little was left of his home from any further trespass.
She finally let her eyes close and sank into the pitch black of sleep, so much brighter than the despair and fear that had been her constant companions.
* * *
Constantine watched the flames leaping and waving in the shallow square of the hearth, letting the warmth seep into his clothes and dry them, relax his tightened muscles. Steam began to curl from beneath the small metal plate he’d set upon the cup to keep ashes from the brew, and rose and stepped to the table to retrieve one of the rags to protect his hand. He saw the little broken eating knife laying perfectly perpendicular to the edge of the tabletop, as if it had been placed there with great care, and then glanced at once to the bench where Theodora Rosemont was fast asleep. He didn’t know how long she had been that way, but her face seemed more serene than at any time since he’d come upon her on the wall walk. He glanced back at the gilded eating utensil, its shiny coating mostly worn away, the creases in the braid of the handle packed with black.
Soot? Dirt?
Constantine picked it up carefully, reverently, with the rag and let it lay across the palm of his other hand. He turned back to the stool soundlessly and sat down. The firelight flashed on the little blade, the shadows of the shallow engraving of initials seeming to deepen in the light, and Constantine ran his thumb across them.
Christian Ambrose Gerard.
How many times had Christian’s little fingers grasped this handle, awkwardly gaining the skill to feed himself? Hadn’t Constantine himself placed it in his very hand many times, helping adjust the boy’s grip, guide it to his mouth? He turned the blade toward himself and brought it closer to his eyes, examining the broken edge. The metal there was not sharp and raw but rounded and dull; this damage had occurred long ago. A result of play, perhaps? Likely Patrice had fitted him for a larger one as he grew any matter, and Christian had reserved this for his own boyish uses. Perhaps when he pretended at being a Templar knight, as Patrice’s last letter had relayed.
He is very proud of you, Constantine—his papa is a hero in his eyes. He looks for your return each day, as do I . . .
Constantine closed his fingers over the eating knife and looked back to the flames. The chill of his memories had banished the warmth of the crackling fire before him, and he hunched into himself on the little stool.
God help him, he was going mad. He had thought that perhaps being at Benningsgate would renew him, stoke the fire of revenge in his belly until it burned so furiously that it obliterated any thoughts beyond his eagerness to watch the life seep out of Glayer Felsteppe. But it seemed as though the opposite was happening; the despair he now felt was greater than any he’d experienced the night he first learned of the fire at Benningsgate. Holding this possession of Christian’s—the only one he now had—caused his heart to ache so that he wished he could reach into his chest and extract the thing, perhaps even toss it on the flames to be devoured.
Anything, anything to take away this pain. This guilt.
Please don’t go, Constantine; please! I swear to you, it will never happen again. I swear it! Please don’t leave us—we need you here.
A spluttering and hissing interrupted his reverie and he blinked away the watery, stinging memories to see the liquid in the metal cup bubbling and spitting through the narrow opening left by the cover. Constantine wound the forgotten rag around his hand and used the broken tip of Christian’s knife to lift the lid a bit and then turn and slide the cup itself farther from the heart of the fire. The boiling settled and the smell reached his nostrils.
It would be better if it had cooked for longer, but he didn’t think Theodora Rosemont’s condition warranted waiting.
He went again to the table, retrieving the cracked tankard and the meager amount of twine. Constantine cut a length of the hairy thread and wrapped it around the top of the tankard, looping it back on itself so that by pulling one end, the twine tightened and closed the crevice near the rim. He knotted it securely and examined it; it would have to do.
He took his supplies back to the fire and squatted by the hearth next to the tankard. First he slid the cup out of the coals and then lifted the lid away carefully and set it aside. Then he wrapped the rag around the cup and placed the blade along the rim, holding back the solid contents as he poured the steaming liquid into the tankard. Constantine set the tankard aside to cool while he added to the metal cup’s contents and then returned the new batch to the coals.
He rose, setting the blade and rag on the table before walking to the bench to stand over Theodora Rosemont’s sleeping form, the tankard in his right hand. He watched her for several moments, wondering if she was dreaming, what she was seeing. She was curled into herself
tightly, as if she needed to defend herself even in her sleep.
Constantine knew that feeling well, and for a moment he thought how bad her life might have been since her father died. She was still so young....
He shook himself. Theodora Rosemont’s plight was no matter to him in the least. She was a means to an end, and her sorrow, her future, that of Glayer Felsteppe’s child—here he grimaced and cocked his head—would cause no rise of sympathy in him. He couldn’t allow it. He wouldn’t allow it.
“Theodora,” he said, and his voice was gravelly, cracked. She did not stir. He cleared his throat. “Dori.”
Her eyelids fluttered open and she blinked, squinted up at him.
“Yes?” she whispered. “Is something the matter?”
Constantine looked down at the tankard in his hand. Damn it.
“Get up. Your broth is ready.”
Chapter 8
Tonight was the night he would kill himself.
Yes, he thought so. He had fasted nearly to the point of starvation during Lent, partaking of only bread and water once a day for more than forty days, so that his already long, gaunt face seemed that of a specter, the graying widow’s peak of his hairline retreating farther on his skull, his voluminous robes unable to conceal his thinness. He had prayed in every private moment—hours on the hard cold stones—to be delivered from the torment of his life, to have this demon excised from his soul. He had partaken of self-flagellation, holding in his mind’s eye the faces of the people he had harmed, betrayed, thrown to the abyss in order to do his dark tormentor’s unholy bidding as he cut his own flesh with the whips. He had prayed unceasingly for escape, for mercy.
But he had celebrated the risen Lord at Thurston Hold himself. There would be no escape for him, save that which he enacted himself. So be it.
Simon heard the chapel door creak open behind him and closed his eyes with a silent sigh, blocking out the sight of the crucifix he’d been concentrating on and closing the worn-thin prayer book between his palms.
It didn’t matter—God hadn’t been speaking to Simon any more than he’d been praying.
“Father?” the timid, watery voice called out. “Am I disturbing you?”
Eseld.
He turned his face only enough so that his voice would carry to the back of the room.
“No,” he lied, the word thick with mucus and the despair of the ocean of tears he’d not wept. He cleared his throat quietly. “What is your need?”
The door creaked again as the stooped nurse entered the chapel. She bobbed and made the sign of the cross in the direction of the altar, although she didn’t venture any further inside.
“It’s not my needs I’ve come for,” she said. “The lord is requesting you.”
Simon’s heart—if indeed he could still claim even a part of that gentle organ—shriveled in his chest. Glayer Felsteppe asking for him could only mean that there was yet another crushing, splintery burden to lay across Simon’s shoulders. He wondered what horrific, grotesque defilement the man wished performed. Simon could hardly think of anything much worse than what he’d already done for Glayer Felsteppe, but that meant little; if there was one thing Felsteppe had always been wealthy in, it was the endless array of appalling acts he wished to have visited upon those he despised.
He didn’t realize he was shaking his head, already futilely refusing the unknown duty, until Eseld stepped closer and spoke again.
“Would that you not let it sit so heavily upon your heart, Father,” she said softly. He looked up at the old woman as she glanced over her shoulder and pushed the chapel door halfway closed. She turned back to him and gave him what she likely hoped was an encouraging smile, her teeth—what few she still claimed—yellowed and black, her thin lips drawing out the pursed wrinkles around her mouth.
“I know it’s a great burden you’ve borne, aiding his lordship. But surely you see that you will be paid back for your loyalty a hundredfold when your life on this dismal earth is over.”
Simon felt the prickle of tears in his eyes. The poor daft woman. “You truly believe that, don’t you?”
Eseld rushed forward and dropped to her knees on the floor, grabbing at the edge of the bench upon which Simon sat to steady her descent, and he winced as he heard the crackling of her joints. He wanted to jerk her to her feet, shake her. But it was she who pinched his cassock with her bony fingers.
“With all my heart. It seemed only a fortnight ago that he left my cottage, naught more to commend him save the farm we only partly claimed. He left for his great crusade, to be a champion for God, and he saved the king of Jerusalem! Despite his enemies’ best efforts to see him ruined.”
Simon stared down into her face, so lined and weary and gray, her hair so thin beneath the black linen cap that he could see her scalp shining in the dim candlelight of the chapel.
“And he sent for me,” she continued, her smile gentling. “His old mother. He needed me in his grand new house, to help raise his precious baby—my grandson! What a gift he has given me, given both you and me, by allowing us such small parts to play. Do you see?”
The bile rose in Simon’s throat so quickly that he couldn’t speak lest he be sick all over the old woman.
“And his work is not yet over; nay, nay!” She inched closer to him on her knees. “He is yet wresting his reward from those enemies who sought him dead. He is winning England for the just! And for me,” she said, her voice softening. “He is atoning for my sins, my failures. Because he loves me.”
“No,” Simon at last managed to strangle out and reached across with his right hand to grasp the woman’s forearm. “He cannot atone for your sins. No one can do that save yourself and Christ.”
“Oh, but he is,” she vowed solemnly. “He’s told me he is, and I believe him. And just as you were asked to do that which pained you—delivering him from his wretched enemies, like that hateful Rosemont woman who would have denied my son his own precious, perfect child—I, too, must persevere in the knowledge that we are doing God’s work as he has put it to Glayer. To his lordship,” she corrected in a whisper with wide, rheumy eyes.
“Eseld, listen to me,” Simon said, his voice trembling with fury and dread as he tightened his fingers around her bony arm. “Your son did not call you to Thurston Hold to save your soul, just as I am not in his employ because I am a loyal servant of God.” He swallowed and could feel the perspiration at his hairline.
Shut up! Shut up!
But he could not. Perhaps he was possessed by a devil inside him, not just the one residing in the lord’s chamber across the bailey. It didn’t matter really—he would be dead soon.
“Glayer Felsteppe is compelling me to do his most offensive tasks because what he knows of my past would see certain people I love very much destroyed. He is using my status as a priest to cover up the crimes he is committing—is forcing me to commit—and I vow to you now that the only one reaping glory and bloodstained reward from both our labors is him.”
“That’s not true, Father,” she said with a pained look and a sympathetic shake of her head. “His lordship loves y—”
“He doesn’t love me, and he doesn’t love you either,” Simon said through clenched teeth, rising from the bench and dragging the nearly weightless Eseld up with him. Her eyes widened in surprise now, but Simon couldn’t stop. “He brought you here to rub in your face all that he now commands; to treat you like a slave and humiliate you—why do you think you are not permitted to call him by his given name or reveal to any other than me that you are his mother?”
“I’m certain the king’s mother doesn’t call him Henry in his own court now, does she?”
“Glayer Felsteppe is not the king!” Simon insisted.
Eseld’s eyes narrowed at last and she jerked her arms free from Simon’s hold. “But he is the lord,” she emphasized. “And that’s as close to a king as the likes of you and I are ever to serve.” She leaned toward him, reaching her bony nose toward Simon’s own. “I know wh
at you did,” she whispered. “His lordship told me how he saved you from ruin when the affair would have been revealed. How he secreted you away. He protected you—he continues to protect you—and you would repay him by turning his graciousness into a s-s-sin,” she hissed, the word moistening Simon’s lips so that he winced.
Damn Glayer Felsteppe; he had revealed just enough of the truth to the woman to convince her that everything he said was a certainty. Isn’t that what he always did, though? Build his lies and treachery around the existing good he wanted? It was like hiding a man’s silver in horse dung and then thanking him to load the manure for you. Robbing everyone he came across of their wealth, their homes, their sanity and reputation—their lives, in too many cases.
“He was not protecting me,” Simon said levelly. “It was he who threatened to reveal me. I had no choice but to cooperate with him.”
“And you’ll cooperate with him now,” Eseld said, shrinking back to her stooped posture and fixing him with a stern glare. “It’s for your own good. And Glander’s. So you go on to him now, as you were told to do. And you do whatever it is he asks of you.” She turned to walk back to the chapel door but stopped before exiting, her fingers wrapped around the handle. She turned back to look at him.
“And if I should ever again hear such slander against my son from your lips, Father”—she paused, and her gaze bore into his with an intensity that accurately portrayed the relation of mother and son—“I’ll tell him.” She bobbed toward the altar, repeated the sign of the cross, and then shut the door with nary a sound.
Eseld Felsteppe had always been a reverent woman.
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