by Karen Ranney
She pressed her hand against the cloth that covered her breast, felt the tremor of her heart as it gradually slowed. Perhaps it had been awakening quickly from a dream that had been charming and sweet.
She had not spoken to him. She was more familiar with the solitary communication of the written word. Perhaps if she’d had someone in whom to confide over the years, it might have been easier to remark upon his presence, to question him about it. “Go to God with your cares,” the abbess had said, dismissing her wishes for a friend with a compassionate smile but little empathy. Juliana might, if she had known how, asked of his travels in the Holy Land. Or broach more of the questions that sat at the tip of her tongue. Why had he not summoned her earlier? Why was he dressed as he was? Why would he never touch her?
She clutched her pillow to her chest and stared up at the ceiling. Sleep seemed as far away as the answers to her many questions.
Chapter 8
Sebastian turned as the door swung open, and reached for his gloves quickly. Jerard knew his secret, but Sebastian did not wish to bludgeon him with evidence of it every day.
“You look fierce, Jerard.”
“I have spent the better part of the afternoon, my lord, arguing with two men.” He placed a small carved figure upon the table. Sebastian picked it up, studied it carefully. Old Simon had captured Juliana perfectly in wood.
“Am I to infer that one of your arguments was with Old Simon?”
“The man is stubborn, my lord. I found him asleep again. He sends this to you as an apology for his actions.”
“He was always doing so to my father. My brother and I had a legion of knights Old Simon carved.” He looked up from his study of the figure. “As long as there are outposts stationed on the hills surrounding Langlinais, it does not matter if he sleeps. Let him. He is an old man, after all. Who else has incurred your wrath?”
“The miller. He wishes his grinding stone replaced.”
“Is it necessary?”
“I think the man plays a game,” Jerard said with a twist of his lips, “by removing the old stone and setting up his own mill with it.”
Sebastian smiled. “He is a man beset with ambition, then. Approach him about it, Jerard. Tell him that we will sponsor a second mill if he will train two boys from Langlinais in his trade. Even an ambitious man must have apprentices.”
Jerard frowned. “Do you think he will agree?”
“If he does not, then at least he knows we are aware of his plans.”
“I would just as soon banish him, my lord.”
“For all your threats, you would not do so. In the years I was gone, I do not believe you banished a single villein.”
A ruddy stain appeared on Jerard’s cheeks. “It was a time of great uncertainty, my lord. We did not know when, or even if, you were coming home. All of us worked together.”
“Then remember those days when those such as the miller begin to vex you, Jerard. It is why men who have fought together become such good friends. A common goal will link even strangers.”
Jerard sighed. “I will try to remember, my lord.”
Sebastian turned and looked out the window. A long silence while neither spoke. Jerard was occupied with unloading the tray containing Sebastian’s noon meal. Sebastian, in turn, was adrift in his own thoughts.
“Do you think it’s time I exile myself, Jerard?” He turned.
“No, my lord,” Jerard said, his gaze meeting Sebastian’s. “It is not yet necessary.”
“Yes, but is it wiser?”
“Why do you ask me such things, my lord?”
“She wishes to converse with me, Jerard. To share my thoughts. Is my wife that lonely, do you think?”
“I do not know, my lord.” A small shrug emphasized his words.
“Has she made friends with any of the women of Langlinais?”
“In truth, my lord, she is as fixed in her work as you are in yours. I think being a scribe means a great deal to her.”
Sebastian had determined the same.
“Are you worried about her becoming ill in your company?”
“It is one of my very great fears, Jerard.”
“It will not sicken her, my lord, else I would have succumbed long ago. What harm can it do to spend a few hours with her?”
“It was your stubbornness that made you test that theory, Jerard.” He softened his words with a smile.
“Perhaps, my lord.” There was an answering smile on Jerard’s face.
“Do I appear different to you, Jerard? Different from other men?”
“I do not know how you wish me to respond, my lord.”
“With truth and honesty,” he said. He held his arms away from his sides. “When you see me as I am, right at this moment, would it appear as if I have a secret to hide?”
Understanding came with a smile. “It does not yet show, my lord. There is nothing that would give her a reason to fear you.”
“It is an idiotic thing to contemplate, Jerard. I know this.”
“Perhaps some things are not meant to be thought of, my lord, but only acted upon.”
“Companionship may well be the worst thing we could share, you know.” He turned back to the window. “I find myself liking her, Jerard.”
Sebastian had watched her walk around Langlinais, talking to the people she met. She shared her dinner with no one, seated at the dais with a small smile at anyone who looked in her direction. Somber Juliana, who stopped and petted all the castle dogs and who had made friends of the cats who wandered through Langlinais.
Would it be better if he hid himself away now? Simply to disappear into his solitude? But not yet, surely. The need was not there, yet. Better now, Sebastian, before your inclination is not to leave at all. Before you are completely charmed and intrigued. It was already difficult to accept his future. What if it became impossible?
Her hair became dislodged from its sturdy braid by evening. Delicate tendrils framed her face and, more often than not, there was a smudge on her cheek, an indication that she had worked on her encyclopedia for most of the day.
If he was careful, she would never discover his secret. And he knew too well that he could never touch her. But he would want to. He knew this, being a creature of curiosity, being a man who loved learning. He had been tutored in the art of love as a boy of thirteen, had read in Albertus’s On the Secrets of Women that it was a man’s role to give a woman pleasure and had taken that to heart at a young age. He had, of course, continued to gauge his skill throughout his youth, marking his tournament victories with conquests of another, more feminine, sort. His years in Paris and Italy had not been celibate ones.
He found himself wanting to know how her laugh sounded, what she dreamed about, if she had wit as well as intelligence.
Could he bear it? That was more to the point.
It was an improvident thing to do, to plan on this torture. How could he believe himself exempt from need? He had not touched a woman in too long, let alone one to whom he was bound by God and ceremony. One with skin the color of the palest blossom, whose lips were soft and full.
He’d been shaken at her appearance the morning he’d gone to her room. Light had surrounded her, and she’d sat encapsulated in it, reading the Latin words of her encyclopedia with lips that moved softly.
He would not touch her, his honor and his soul were in jeopardy if he did so. But to sit near her, to converse with her, to smell her scent on her skin and not simply the memory of it lingering in the air, these things seemed necessary. More so, perhaps, than prudence or wisdom.
He would ask her what was her favorite book to transcribe, what were her favorite colors. She could show him how she made those glorious colored inks that colored the frontispage and capital letters. He might, if he were brave enough, tell her a little about these last few years, enough that she would garner the flavor of them, but not enough that she might understand the whole.
He would learn all the nuances of her voice, soft and barely audib
le as it was. He might see her smile again, or hear her laugh. Had she laughed since coming to Langlinais? Such a solemn creature, his wife, with her serious green eyes, and her full mouth pressed into a prim studiousness. She was an ardent student, an eager learner. Yet, she had acted too much like him, aloof and apart from others.
What would she be like as companion? And was he a fool to want to know?
Chapter 9
“You do not let much disturb you, do you, my lady?” Jerard asked.
She raised her head, blinked a few times, then smiled at her visitor. The oriel was a quiet place, but even so she’d not heard Jerard enter.
“I am very careful. Such things take attention.”
“That is why I waited until you moved your hand,” he said.
“Thank you. Most people would not have noticed.”
“I spent many years as a squire,” he said. “Such duties inspire one to notice things others dismiss.”
“To protect your lord’s back?”
He smiled. “That, and to shine his armor and shield, mend his lance, ensure his horse does not go lame. A thousand duties that a squire must do before he is told. The punishment, otherwise, is not pleasant.”
“Were you flogged, Jerard?”
“My lord has a way of looking at you that is worse than a blow, Lady Juliana. I almost wished he would strike me sometimes. It would have been easier than disappointing him.”
“I had an abbess who was the same. She had a way of sighing that made my bones ache all the way through.”
They exchanged conspiratorial smiles.
“My husband is a man beset by secrets, isn’t he?”
“I could not say, my lady.” His smile changed to become that infuriating one that warned he would say nothing further.
“I was given something to convey to you, Lady Juliana.” He handed her a small silver coffer, an elaborate pattern inscribed on its rounded lid. She opened it slowly, then stared at its contents. It was as if Sebastian had wished to add to his enigma by giving her this odd gift.
Jerard stared down at the box of rusty filings she held in her hand. “Is this something that pleases you, my lady?”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “I find that it does.”
He left the oriel, which was just as well. Jerard made the small space seem even tinier than it was. But then, Sebastian was larger. But she had rarely noticed how the room had appeared the times he’d entered it. Her attention had been too distracted by the man.
She stared down at the coffer in her hand. It was small enough to fit within her palm. A strange gift. He had remembered the recipe for her ink. She closed the silver box, held her fingers tight over it. Had he touched it? Was the warmth she felt in the metal from his fingers, or from the tightness of her own hold?
Reluctantly, she returned to her work, placing the box in the corner, where she could readily see it. She worked through the midday meal, waving away Grazide when the maidservant would have coaxed her to the great hall. She was determined to finish the Q she had begun nearly a week ago.
The room darkened as she worked, until she realized it was not a cloud over the sun that obscured her writing, but the fall of night. She laid the parchment page to the side so that it might dry completely and poured the ink she had not used into a small bowl. It had darkened too much to be of much use. Mixing ink was more complicated than simply pouring a few ingredients together. Gauging when the time was right to use it was just as important. A pale ink would fade too quickly; one too black would eat through the parchment itself.
She closed the door to the oriel, was walking to her chamber when she heard Sebastian’s voice. Curious, she dropped her hand from her door and walked to the end of the passageway.
She placed her palm against the iron-banded wood. The words seeped through the door and into her heart. They summoned her like a child’s weeping in the dark. Intellige clamoren meum. Know the cries I utter.
She hooked her thumb in the latch, pushed upon the door. It swung open silently. Since it was so dark in the corridor there was no show of light to betray her presence.
The door she opened was the family entrance to the chapel. She’d discovered it the first morning after her arrival at Langlinais. A carved wooden arch led to the altar, above it a large window shaped in the form of a flower, its petals crafted of opaque green glass, now black with night. Upon the white-draped altar sat two lit candles, but no chalice and plate. There were wall hangings depicting biblical scenes, a stone floor painted burgundy and strewn with rushes. But the four sets of benches that sat behind the altar in two rows were not adorned with cushions; nor was there any other sign of wealth.
She moved into the room, pulled the door half-closed behind her. Four fluted pillars supported the roof, domed and strutted to support its pitch. She moved to one side, so that the column did not obstruct her view of the altar.
Sebastian knelt there, head bowed. His words were repeated over and over. “Sustinui qui simul contristaretur, et non fuit; consolantem me quaesivi et non inveni. Intellige clamoren meum.”
She’d never heard of a prayer that beseeched as it demanded. I hoped that someone would weep with me, but there no one. I sought someone to comfort me, but found no one. Know the cries I utter.
She should not be standing there listening to a man’s prayers. The thoughts of a soul verbalized. What she did was invasion of the greatest sort, an intrusion between God and supplicant. Yet, for a long moment she did not move, transfixed by the aura of grief and despair that permeated the room.
For what did he pray?
Her lips echoed the words of the Latin chant he spoke. Moments later, there was another sound, that of a fist striking wood. She jerked, startled. An oath, clear and pure as the morning call of a sparrow, echoed in the room set aside for worship. She clasped her hands together at her chin, her knuckles pressed against dry lips.
A brave woman would go to him, kneel at his side. That woman might even ask him why he prayed the way he did, with entreaty and condemnation coming in one breath. She would place her own fingers against his lips or kneel beside him in anxious prayer in order to beg forgiveness for him. Cursing was a terrible thing to do in a place consecrated to God.
She might yearn to be a woman of fearless courage, but the sad truth was that she failed abysmally at the role. She stepped back as if to press herself into the wall.
A soft sound escaped her. A sigh, perhaps her own prayer. It was not loud enough to be heard, especially by Sebastian, ardent as he was with his own pleas to heaven. Yet, it must have been, because he stopped speaking. A pause in time, in which nothing moved, no words were said. All sound simply ceased, everything but the beat of her own heart and her own barely felt breaths.
Her fingers trembled at the edge of her lips. The silence grew upon itself, one moment maturing into two, then three.
Sebastian stood. He turned, slowly, as if wishing her gone before he looked. As he did so, he pulled the cowl to cover his face again. Not soon enough. Not nearly soon enough. She had viewed him clearly by the light of the candles.
Once, she’d seen a Roman sculpture, found when a farmer was plowing his field. The villagers had brought it to the convent, in hopes that the abbess would be able to tell them if such a thing was valuable or if they should destroy it. The statue, nearly life-size, was of a young man attired in nothing more than a winged helmet. He stood with one leg in front of the other, a hand resting on a thrust-out hip, the other hand behind his back, holding a small orb. The face had been strong, almost insolent. The lips curved and full, the nose proud, the brow broad. High cheekbones descended to a chin softened from sharpness by the hint of cleft. It was the face of a man who, despite his youth, was well aware of his power.
A face not unlike that of Sebastian of Langlinais.
She had prepared herself otherwise, had thought him wounded or somehow deformed or scarred. She’d not thought him to be beautiful.
They stood staring at each other in sile
nce.
He’d promised her Langlinais, but he’d given her confusion. She was left with endless questions without answers. And now he stood before her unmarked. Another mystery, another riddle.
“Go away, Juliana,” he said softly, his voice strangely kind. “Now.”
Chapter 10
Every moment of Juliana’s life at Sisters of Charity had been precisely regimented. There were bells to mark the hours and the occupations therein, there was the soft entreaty of a sister in charge of a certain duty, the rhythmic chant of Latin as a call to worship.
She was expected to adhere to the rules of the community, even though she was only fostered at the convent while awaiting the summons from her husband. She was watched as closely as any novitiate. All such characteristics of form and self that hinted at waywardness were to be modified or expunged. She was not, for example, allowed beyond the convent gates for any reason. Nor was she allowed in the garden simply to appreciate the scent of growing flowers. Her hour there was set aside for weeding, not for idleness. She had known such regulation of her life that it was odd, if not a bit discomfiting, to experience the sudden freedom of her position as the Lady of Langlinais.
“I feel like walking,” she announced to Grazide that afternoon. Instead of protesting, the other woman simply nodded, never ceasing her conversation with the other attendants. Juliana stood there in the great hall, disconcerted. She had marshaled her arguments for her privacy only to have them be unnecessary.
She removed her toque, left her hair in its braid. Her surcoat was light enough that she would not swelter in the heat. The afternoon was bright and still, the drone of a bee was the only sound she heard as she left the great hall. The Terne flowed in a swift movement below the south wall, the gentle breeze rippled the water and cooled the air. From where she stood, she could see the expanse of Langlinais as it curved in a half-moon shape, its walls following the undulation of the river.