Surely her husband could not intend to leave her here?
Marie shifted on the bench beside her. Celeste turned. A peasant woman she recognized from the morning Mass had entered the narrow path of the labyrinth, swaggering toward them with some purpose that made her bold beyond her station. She stopped directly in front of Celeste. Her feet were bare and dirty below her plain brown kirtle. She smelled of sweat and fresh baked bread. Her hands, which Celeste could see without raising her head, were chapped and red, but clean. Someone working in the kitchen would have such hands.
Someone from the kitchen would know what went onto a platter for a guest of the abbey, would notice when the amount of food increased.
“I saw you at Mass.”
Celeste gazed ahead at the garden as though unaware of the woman’s presence. She need not fear a kitchen wench, and yet her heart was pounding. No peasant should speak thus to a Lady.
Would Marie be able to maintain the charade they had agreed upon? Celeste dared not look at her, but she could see the child’s hands clasped tightly in her lap, her knuckles turning white. She should have coached the girl on how to respond.
But she had not really believed her husband had a spy. Even now she could not think so. Perhaps the Abbess had sent her. No, that was even less likely. She felt the tightening in her forehead that threatened another headache.
Why did Marie not say something?
“Is not the garden beautiful, My Lady?” The woman spoke more loudly, bending a little toward Celeste.
“M-My Lady is not well,” Marie stammered.
“She went to Mass, and she is eating more, and she is sitting here in the garden.” The woman crossed her arms as though she had made a clever argument.
Marie’s mouth gaped open. Celeste vowed to box her ears as soon as they were alone in her room.
The woman bent down to peer into Celeste’s face. “You are looking better, My Lady,” she yelled.
Celeste shrank back. “I am tired,” she said, trying to sound ill and confused rather than furious.
“It was my idea!” Marie cried, jumping to her feet. “I thought it might help her regain her health if I took her to Mass. It was my idea to sit in the garden! She is not better yet!”
Marie was babbling like a fool. Even this simple peasant would recognize that she was lying. Celeste staggered to her feet. She swayed a moment to alert them, then let herself fall. As they rushed to catch her she threw up her arms, managing to smack them both, though not nearly as hard as she would have liked.
“Please, help me get her to her room,” Marie said, rubbing her cheek and winding her arm under Celeste’s.
Celeste let them support her back to her room and help her onto the bed. “That man—the one who was kind to me—is he here?” she murmured.
“Who is she speaking about?” the woman asked in a carrying whisper.
“I think… I think the one who found her when she ran outside the abbey.” Marie sounded puzzled.
“The spice peddler! I saw him at the market. He is long gone now, up north to sell his spices. Why is she talking of him?”
“She is ill. Her mind wanders.”
A good answer, though spoken a little too hesitantly. Celeste closed her eyes; it was not necessary to feign exhaustion.
“She is gone,” Marie said unnecessarily, closing the door behind the peasant woman. Her voice shook.
Celeste opened her eyes. That foolish, interfering woman. How could she go to the guesthouse for dinner now? She must stay here and pretend to rest. The room seemed even more confining after she had been outside. She sat up, glaring. And he was gone. Up north somewhere. How could she retrieve her ring now? She stood up and went over to the window. Its little square of sunlight taunted her.
Why should she care about her husband’s ring? He had been faithless when she needed him, that much she did know: he sent her away. What attachment did the ring hold, then? Little enough for him, and therefore, none for her. But she should not suffer for losing it, and she would not. Lord Bernard wanted to keep her in this abbey, but she would find a way to leave.
She would have to. The kitchen servant had already noticed her increased appetite. Her body had begun filling out beneath the drab black kirtle that covered her from neck to foot. Already her stomach was slightly rounded. Her arms and face must be filling out also. She could not continue to feign illness for long.
He had put her in this position; he had sent her here, ill and helpless. She felt a rush of heat, thinking of him. That spark again, like a fall of fire landing on one’s skin, blinking out as quickly as it lands, leaving only its heat. And an emotion she could not identify because it disappeared as soon as it touched her. Anger? Fear? He was her husband. What else was he?
Behind her, Marie’s straw pallet rustled as she stood up. Celeste turned. Marie stood there, grinning.
“What are you smirking about?”
“Now we know who is watching you for Lord Bernard.”
Just that quickly the morning’s disaster was reversed. Yes, indeed, they knew, and the knowledge was useful, if bitter. She could no longer deny that her husband had someone watching her. Was he hoping to find a reason to denounce their marriage?
“I have seen her scrubbing the pots after mid-day dinner,” Marie continued eagerly, “but she is never there when I fetch your evening platter.”
Celeste smiled. She had misjudged Marie. The child was as superstitious as any peasant, but not dull-witted, and she was more observant than Celeste had expected. She wished she had not slapped the girl quite so hard.
What was wrong with her, one moment insensitive to others, the next regretful? Was she possessed? She shrugged the thought away uneasily. “How is a kitchen servant to get a message to my husband?”
“Her son is a stable boy. I have seen her talking to him. He exercises the horse Lord Bernard left in the stables.” She hesitated. “I saw Lord Bernard give him a denier and heard him say there would be another if the boy did as he was bid. I remember because I was—I was angry that Lord Bernard gave me naught and you required more care than a horse!” She said the last indignantly, then slapped her hand over her mouth. Not only had she compared her Lady to a horse, but the comparison had favoured the horse.
Celeste frowned.
Marie’s other hand crept up to cover her cheek.
Celeste ignored the gesture. Something else bothered her, something Marie had said. She reviewed Marie’s earlier comments until she came to it: Lord Bernard’s horse. One horse? What had happened to her dun gelding? …Honey, that was what she had called it. She cringed inwardly at the thought of having named a horse. What a sentimental girl she had been. Nevertheless, her horse should have been in the stable, and Marie’s pony, also. Had her husband taken them back with him in order to imprison her here?
‘I will keep you here as long as I can,’ the Abbess had said. Celeste glanced at her winter cape on its hook and shuddered. Had they reached some agreement, Lord Bernard and the Abbess? She turned toward Marie.
“Let us play a game, Marie. I will think of something, and you must guess what it is.”
Marie looked up. “A game?” The expression in her eyes was hopeful, childishly eager. Celeste felt an inexplicable sense of remorse. She should strive to be more patient with the girl.
“How can I know what you are thinking?” Marie’s face wrinkled into a worried frown.
“I will tell you when you are right. And I will give you a hint. It is about someone we both know.”
Marie grinned. “Ahh…about the Abbess? Oh, I am wrong!”
“You are not wrong,” Celeste lied quickly. “I am surprised you guessed so soon.” She sat down on the bed. She had hoped for information about Lord Bernard, but now she wondered what Marie knew about the Abbess. “You must tell me more than that in order to win the game.” She gestured for Marie to sit as well.
Marie pulled the little stool beside the bed and perched on it. “When your mother was ill, the
Abbess came to visit, to take care of your mother and the household. I was little, but I remember. She was only a nun then, not an Abbess. I asked her why she could talk, and she told me she was excused from her vow of silence while she was at her sister’s house.”
“Her—” Celeste stopped herself. “Her hair was long then, was it not?” she amended. Her sister’s house? The Abbess was her aunt?
“I do not know, My Lady. She always wore a veil. Perhaps you saw her brushing it, in private. You followed her around and would not play with Lise and me. You told us you were going to be a nun and could not play anymore.”
Celeste leaped up, on the verge of accusing Marie of lying when she recalled that Marie was recounting the words of a child, play-acting adult roles as children do. Of course she had not meant it—she had married Lord Bernard.
And lost his ring. Celeste rubbed her thumb against her bare finger, momentarily distracted. What if that was all the excuse he needed to shut her away here forever? Who would speak on her behalf?
“My mother—”
“Your mother died,” Marie said solemnly. “Why were you thinking of that, Lady? Are you sad again?” She clutched her hands together, an anxious expression in her eyes.
“No, no.” Celeste forced herself to smile. “I am thinking of her and my father—”
“You mean your step-mother,” Marie said matter-of-factly. “Your step-mother and your father.”
Celeste drew her breath in. This was unfortunate news. A mother might have prevailed upon her husband to grant their daughter asylum, but she could not reveal her loss of memory to a stranger who had taken her mother’s place. A second wife would not want the first one’s grown daughter in her home.
“You did not say to guess your father.” Marie looked at her accusingly.
“I did not mean to think of him. You are right, I was thinking of the Abbess first. Tell me about her if you would win.” Her aunt. That would explain why she was here, in this drab little abbey. Her husband had sent her to her aunt in her illness. He had not meant to cast her aside.
The woman had not acted as an aunt. Of course, an Abbess would not; she had a higher calling. Celeste must not trust her too far, aunt or not.
“The Abbess went back to the abbey and you played with us again. That is all.” Marie frowned, twining her hands in her skirt. Her face brightened. “She visited again two years ago, when you were married. Is that it?”
Celeste nodded. “That is what I was thinking all along. The second visit.”
“That is not about the Abbess. That is about your wedding.” Marie looked at her reproachfully. “Your hint was false.”
“I was remembering the Abbess at my wedding.” Celeste spoke sharply, frustrated at having to rely on foolish tricks to prompt her memory.
“I do not like this game,” Marie said, pouting.
Celeste gritted her teeth behind her smile. “But you have almost won. Just tell me about the Abbess and my wedding.”
“You already know. It was but two summers ago. Are you well, My Lady?” Marie looked at her warily.
Celeste’s hand trembled with the desire to slap Marie again. She opened her mouth to rebuke her for her insolence when someone knocked at the door.
Marie turned quickly.
“Wait,” Celeste whispered.
The knocking sounded again, harder.
Celeste hurried to the bed, thankful now that there were no rushes on the floor to betray her. “Open the door. Say I am asleep,” she whispered, lying down with her back to the door.
The door squeaked open.
“I have brought Lady Celeste’s dinner.”
Celeste recognized the voice of the woman who had spoken to them in the arbour. She lay still, hardly breathing.
“It is not yet dinnertime,” Marie said. “My mistress is asleep.” She spoke too loudly in her nervousness. It would sound as though she were not concerned about waking Celeste. Celeste clenched her hands beneath her, struck with the indignity of her position. Here she lay, pretending sleep, afraid a kitchen servant would find her out. She had to depend on a child to rescue her from a servant!
“I thought she would be hungry,” the woman persisted. “She seems to be getting better?”
Despite her annoyance, Celeste almost laughed at the woman’s anxious tone. She must be desperate to send her message—she had probably been promised a reward, which she would never see if the Abbess contacted Lord Bernard first. At the same time she would be terrified of what would happen if Lord Bernard arrived and found the report to be false.
“Thank you for bringing her dinner,” Marie said. “I will try to get her to eat some of it when she awakes.”
When the door closed, Celeste sat up. She examined with disgust the platter of bread and cheese and salted fish. She had looked forward to eating at the guesthouse.
She picked up the bread and bit into it. It was dark and flavourful and still warm from the oven. She chewed it slowly, washing it down with ale. Tomorrow she would sit in the garden again, then afterward take her dinner in the guesthouse. It was better after all not to do everything on the first day, if she wanted appear to improve gradually.
She reached resolutely for her knife, quelling her strange antipathy toward it—the past was the past; she would master it, not fear it—and speared a piece of the fish on its blade. So the Abbess was her aunt. Perhaps Lord Bernard did not have everyone on his side.
***
The sun had already brightened the sky, erasing the flush of dawn, when Marie rushed into the room sloshing water onto the floor from the washbasin she was carrying.
“What is the matter with you?” Celeste demanded, sitting up and frowning at Marie’s carelessness.
“The stable boy has gone,” Marie gasped as soon as she closed the door. “One of the garden men has taken his place.”
“He may be ill…” Celeste did not believe her own words. A sense of dread had come over her as soon as Marie had spoken. “The horse is gone,” she whispered.
“—And Lord Bernard’s horse is—How did you know?”
“I did not know. I only feared it was so.”
How much time did she have before he arrived? Two days for a messenger to reach her husband, Marie had said. The boy would be there in two days. And two more for Lord Bernard to ride here. Four days, if he left at once.
“We must be gone before he arrives.”
The Latin chants sung by the Cluniac monks reverberated off the walls and high, vaulted ceilings of the huge cathedral, which leant their voices an unearthly majesty. Beneath the soaring choir peasants and pilgrims, landowners and nobility maintained a busy hum of conversation and movement in the impossibly long and wide nave.
Jean stood near the back, masking his bad humour with a smile whenever someone addressed him. He had been in a foul temper since the market ended yesterday. There was no reason for it: his sales at Cluny and at the market ensured his survival for another year, even without the ring. His rumbling belly would soon be satisfied at the Feast of the Assumption, and his story of the nail and the pilgrim’s badge was sure to convince the Abbot to pay good money for them. Nevertheless, he was tense and irritable, and the pious choir only increased his irritation.
Liselle’s brimming eyes and Guillaume’s proud smile lingered in his thoughts, taunting him. He did not want any part of their emotions, which seeped into his awareness with unaccountable persistence. They had chosen to buy the handkerchief. They had willingly participated in the deception. They were pleased with their purchase and that should be the end of it. But then what, when they needed the blessing they had paid for, and none came? The thought sickened him, a reaction so absurd he could scarcely believe it. Had not his parents’ deaths wiped such softness out of him? Something else must be the cause of his present discomfort. Indigestion, perhaps.
The monks’ chanting died away, and the buzz of conversation with it. The Bishop, from his elevated podium, addressed the nobility in ringing Latin. Jean r
ecognized the term for the Assumption and the Virgin’s holy name, but little else. He would not even be listening, like most of the congregation, except for the need to still his own thoughts. Finally, the Bishop spoke briefly in French, extolling his restless audience to confess their sins and to seek the intercession of the church to save them from the eternal torments of the afterlife. Prayers and pardons, candles and confessions, and certainly tithing. It was a simple, financial message, and it improved Jean’s mood considerably.
Back at the guesthouse, servants and novices hurried about, taking the long, wooden tables down from the walls and setting benches alongside them in preparation for the Feast. Jean passed them on the way to the room where he had slept.
His wares were packed, ready to be strapped onto the donkey, exactly as he had left them. He untied his purse and checked that the pilgrim’s badge was near the top, then opened one of the panniers to fetch a small flask of oil. He reached into the wadmal bag.
The nail must have slid down inside. He dug down deeper but could not find it, even when his fingers felt the bottom. Had it fallen out? He should have left it in his purse with the ring and the badge! What if it were lost? He wiped his brow with his sleeve and reached in again.
Aha. There. He pulled it out.
The Sorrow Stone Page 7