Lady of Hay

by Barbara Erskine

  His face lightened a little as the door was pushed open and a girl peered around it.

  “Are you asleep, Father?”

  “No, my darling. Come in.” Cursing the weakness that seemed to have spread even to his voice, Reginald watched her close the heavy door carefully and come toward him. Involuntarily he smiled. She was so lovely, this daughter of his; his only child. She was tall, taller than average. She had grown this last year, until she was a span at least higher even than he, with her dark auburn hair spread thickly on her shoulders and down her back and the strange green eyes flecked with gold that she had from her dead mother. She was all he had left, this tall graceful girl. And he was all she had, and soon…He shrugged. He had made provision long ago for the future when he had betrothed her to William de Braose. And now the time had come.

  “Sit here, Matilda. I must talk to you.” Feebly he patted the blankets that covered him, and the lines of his face softened as she took his hand, curling up beside him, tucking her long legs under her.

  “Will you eat something today, Father? If I prepare it myself and help you with the spoon?” she coaxed, nestling close. “Please?” She could feel the new inexorable cold in his hand and it frightened her. Gently she pressed it to her cheek.

  “I’ll try, Matilda, I’ll try.” He pushed himself a little farther up on the pillows with an effort. “But listen, sweetheart, there is something I must tell you first.” He swallowed, trying to collect his thoughts as he gazed sadly into her anxious face. So often he had hoped this moment would never come. That somehow, something would happen to prevent it.

  “I have written to Bramber, Matilda. Sir William de Braose has agreed that it is time the marriage took place. His son could have married long since, but he has waited until you were of age. You must go to him now.” He tried not to see the sudden anguish on her face.

  “But, Father, I can’t leave you, I won’t.” She sat up straight, her eyes bright with tears. “Nothing will make me leave you. Ever.”

  He groped for her hand again and held it gently. “Sweetheart. It is I who must leave you, don’t you see? And I couldn’t die happy without knowing that you were wed. Please. To please me, go to him. Make him an obedient wife.”

  He was seized by another fit of coughing and Matilda slipped from the end of the bed and ran to the pillow, cradling his head on her breast. Her eyes were full of tears as she clutched him, desperately clinging to him. “You can’t die, Father, you can’t. You’ll get well. You will. You always have before.”

  The tears spilled over and dropped onto her father’s gray head. He looked up, trying to smile, and raised a shaky hand to brush her cheek. “Don’t cry, darling. Think. When you marry William you will be a great lady. And his mother will take care of you. Come, please don’t be so unhappy.”

  “But I want to stay with you.” She still clung to him stubbornly. “I hate William, you know that. He’s ugly and he’s old and he smells.”

  Reginald sighed. So often he had given her her way, this girl of his, and he longed to do so again. But this time he had to stand firm. For her own sake. He closed his eyes, smelling the lavender of her gown, remembering. She was so like her mother had been: willful, beautiful, wild…

  Sleep came so suddenly these days. He could feel his lids drooping. There was no way to fight it. He supposed death would come like that and he welcomed the thought. He was too old now, too racked with pain to regret the young man’s dream of death on the field of battle. Smiling a little, he relaxed against her, feeling the soft warmth of her body, the gentle brush of her lips on his hair. Yes. She was very like her mother…

  ***

  Instinctively Matilda ran first to the chapel for comfort. She pushed open a heavy door and peered in. It was empty. She could see the statue of Our Lady, lit by the single flickering candle that stood on the altar. After running to it, she crossed herself and knelt. “Please, Holy Mother, don’t let him die. You mustn’t let my father die. I won’t marry William de Braose, so there’s no point in trying to make me.” She gazed up at the serene stone face of the statue. It was cold in the chapel. A stray draft coming from the slit window high in the stone vault above the altar sent a shiver of cold down her spine and she wondered suddenly with a tremor of fear if anyone was listening to her at all, if there was anyone there to care. She pushed away the thought and, ashamed, she crossed herself again. “You must help me, Holy Mother, you must.” Her tears were blinding her again and the candlelight hazed and flickered. “There is no one else. If you don’t help me, I’ll never pray to you again. Never.” She bit her lip, scared by what she had said. She shouldn’t have done it, but the chapel held such echoing emptiness…

  She scrambled to her feet then crept out, closing the door softly behind her. If she could find no comfort there, there was only one other thing to do. Ride. When you galloped fast into the wind you could forget everything but the speed and the cold and the power of the horse between your legs. She ran to the chamber she shared with her nurse and the two maidens who were supposed to be her friends, and rummaged through the rail, looking for her heaviest mantle.

  “Matilda, come to your embroidery now, ma p’tite.” She could hear her nurse Jeanne’s voice from the garderobe, where she was sorting clothes. “Tilda?” The tone sharpened.

  After grabbing a fur-lined cloak, Matilda threw it around her shoulders and tiptoed to the door. Then, deaf to Jeanne’s indignant shouts, she pelted down the spiral stairs.

  “Shall I come with you, young mistress?” The groom who held her excited horse knew as well as she that her father had forbidden her to ride alone.

  She flung herself into the saddle. “Not this time, John. Blame me if anyone’s angry.” She raised her whip and set the horse across the high slippery cobbles of the courtyard at a canter. Once beyond the crowded muddy village she pushed the animal into a gallop, feeling her hair stream behind her in the cold wind. Galloping like this, fast, she didn’t have time to think. Not about her poor, sick father, or about the squat, red-haired man at Bramber who was destined to become her husband. Nothing mattered out here. Here she was free and happy and alone.

  At the top of the hill she reined in breathlessly, pushing her tangled hair back as the wind tugged it across her eyes. She turned to look back at the village far away in the valley, and her father’s castle behind it. I need never go back, she thought suddenly. If I don’t want to, I need never go back. I could ride and ride and ride and they would never find me. Then she thought of Reginald lying so pale in his chamber, and imperceptibly she straightened her shoulders. For his sake she would go back. For his sake she would marry William de Braose. For his sake she would go to the end of the world if he asked it of her.

  Sadly she turned the horse and began to pick her way back down the steep track.

  ***

  For two days before the wedding the attendants of the de Braose household crowded them out, overspilling from the small castle and its walls into tents and marquees on the edge of the village. Old Sir William, a wiry hawklike man with piercing gray eyes, spent much of his time closeted with Matilda’s father while his son hunted across the hills, sparing no time for his betrothed. Matilda was extremely glad. She had been horrified by her glimpse of the younger William, whom she had barely remembered from their introduction at their betrothal years before. She had forgotten, or perhaps then he had been different. His reddish hair and beard now framed a coarse, heavily veined face with an uncompromisingly cruel mouth. He had kissed her hand once, running his eye expertly up her body, judging her, Matilda thought furiously, as if she had been a filly he was contemplating buying for his stable, then he turned away, more interested in his host’s hunting dogs than in his bride.

  Reginald was too ill even to be carried in a litter to the wedding ceremony, so he summoned his daughter and new son-in-law to his room as soon as they returned from the parish church. Matilda had spent the first part of the day in a frozen daze. She allowed herself to be dressed in he
r finest gown and mantle without interest. She followed Jeanne down to the hall and gave her arm to old Sir William without a flicker of emotion on her face. Then she walked with him to the church without any sign that she heard or even saw the gay procession of men and women who followed them. But her fists were bunched so tightly into her skirt that her nails had bitten into her palms. “Please, Holy Mother, don’t let it happen. Please, Holy Mother, don’t let it happen.” She was murmuring the phrase over and over again under her breath like a magic charm. If she kept on saying it, without stopping, it would work. It must work.

  She scarcely saw when Sir William left her side in the church porch and his son took his place. She didn’t hear a word of the service as the old half-blind priest gabbled the form, shivering in his surplice as the autumn leaves tossed around them and a few drops of icy rain splattered in under the porch roof. Even later, as she knelt to kiss her father’s hand, she was dazed. It was not until he put gentle fingers beneath her chin and tilted it a little to look into her face, murmuring “Be happy, sweetheart, and pray for your old father” that her control broke. She flung herself at him, clinging to him, her fingers wound into the wool of the blankets. “Please, please don’t die. Darling, darling Papa, don’t make me go with him, please—”

  Hastily William stepped forward, his hands on her arms, and he dragged her off the bed. “Control yourself, madam,” he hissed at her sharply. “Come away. Can’t you see your father’s upset? Don’t make it worse. Come quickly.” His voice was rough.

  Tearing herself free of his grip, Matilda rounded on him. “Don’t touch me!” she almost spat at him, her eyes blazing. “I’ll stay with my father as long as I please, sir!”

  William was taken aback. He stepped forward awkwardly, frowning. “You must do as I say, Matilda. You’re my wife now.”

  “Yes, I’m your wife, God pity me,” she whispered in anguish, “but I’m his daughter first.” She was shaking with fear and anger.

  “Matilda, please.” Reginald stretched out painfully to lay his fingers on her arm. “Obey your husband, sweetheart. Leave me to sleep now.” He tried to smile, but his lids were falling. The familiar blackness was closing around him. “Go, sweetheart,” he mumbled. “Please go.”

  With one longing agonized look at him Matilda turned away. She glanced at William as he reached forward to take her arm and then dodged past him, gathering her skirts in her hands and, blind with tears, ran toward the door.

  The wedding feast was interminable. She only nibbled at the food on the platter in front of her that she shared with her husband. He was drinking vast quantities of wine, roaring with laughter at the bawdy jokes of the men near him, rocking toward her every so often, trying to plant a kiss on her cheek or her shoulder.

  She gritted her teeth and reached for her own goblet. Trying not to let the tiny seed of panic inside her grow, she kept thinking of the peaceful warm glow of the candle in her father’s room and of the gentle, lined face on the pillow and the loving reassuring touch of his hands.

  ***

  The bed was strewn with flowers. Matilda stood, clutching her embroidered bedgown tightly around her, not daring to look at her husband as he chased the last of the giggling women out of the room. His face was blurred with wine and lust as he turned triumphantly to her at last.

  “So. My wife.” He leered a little, his own fur-trimmed gown held around his waist by a gilded leather girdle. She stood transfixed, her back to the high shuttered window, her hands once more tight fists at her sides. She was much taller than he, but so slight he could have snapped her in half with one blow from his enormous fist.

  Her heart was beating very fast as he raised his hands to her shoulders. She wanted to push him away, to run, to scream, but somehow she forced herself to stand still as he loosed her girdle and thrust the gown back from her shoulders. She made no attempt to hold it as it fell, sliding from her unresponsive arms to the floor, billowing out in blues and silvers around her knees, leaving her standing before him, naked. Almost wonderingly he raised a hand and touched her shoulder, drawing his calloused fingers down across her breast. Then he seized her, crushing her to him, running his hand down her back, over her buttocks, fondling, caressing. Her hair fell in a dark auburn curtain across her face as he lifted her onto the bed, and she made no attempt to push it away. She lay limp after a first involuntary struggle of protest at what he did, biting her lips in pain, trying not to cry out as the agony of his thrusting tore through her and the first dark drops of blood stained the bridal sheets. Then at last with a grunt he rolled off her and lay still.

  She remained dry-eyed in the dark and tried to ease her aching body on the hot mattress, not seeing the embroidered canopy that hung over the bed. Some of the flowers had been caught beneath them and crushed, and their sweet scent mingled with the reek of sweat and drying blood.

  ***

  Reginald de St. Valerie died at dawn. Lying sleepless in her chamber watching the light pale in the stuffy room, Matilda had ceased to hear the regular snores of her husband. It was as if some part of her had slipped away to hover over the deathbed, watching her father, seeing his face relax without struggle at last into peace. “He waited to see me married,” she whispered into the dark. “He waited only for that.” And then she turned at last to her pillow and began to cry despairingly.

  ***

  The day after the funeral the long procession of horses and wagons set off across a bleak autumnal southern England toward Sussex. Matilda rode, upright and proud, beside her husband, her face set. She was determined not to weep now, not to show any emotion to her husband or his followers. Somewhere behind her in the train of riders was Jeanne, her nurse. Jeanne had understood, had cradled her head and rocked her as she watched beside her father’s body. Jeanne had mixed her wine and herbs to drink, “pour le courage, ma p’tite,” and muttered magic words over the bed in which Matilda and William had slept, to help ease the girl’s troubles. Each night had been the same. He had not spared her for her father’s sake, nor had she expected it. The pain, after the first time, had not been so bad.

  The elder William rode in front of them, the chestnut rump of his horse glistening beneath its gay caparison in the pale autumn sunlight. They were nearing a wayside chapel when Matilda, keeping her eyes fixed resolutely on her father-in-law’s broad back, was surprised to see him raise his hand, bringing the long procession to a halt. Then he turned in the high saddle. “I’ll wait, my son,” he announced curtly. Matilda glanced at her husband, who was dismounting. He ducked under his horse’s head and came to her side. “I always pray at holy places,” he announced self-righteously. “I should like you to accompany me.” He helped her down from the horse and, taking her arm, ushered her into the chapel. Puzzled, she glanced over her shoulder. No one else had made a move to join them. The entire cortège stood in the settling dust, disinterested, bored, as their lord’s eldest son and his bride ducked into the dark chapel. For some reason Matilda suddenly felt afraid.

  She knelt reluctantly beside her husband as he prayed. No words came to her own lips; her throat was dry. The Virgin had not heeded her supplications when her help had been needed so much. Now it was too late. What was the point of praying?

  She glanced sideways at William. His eyes were closed, the short sandy lashes veiling the pale irises, the coarse folded flesh of his chin resting on the thick wool of his blue mantle. On his shoulder there was a large circular brooch, at its center a purple amethyst. The stone caught a little spark of light from the candle at the shrine.

  They stopped a dozen times like this on the long journey and each time Matilda, too afraid to refuse, alone dismounted with her husband. But not once did she try to pray.

  ***

  Bramber Castle was built high on a hill overlooking the marshes that flanked the River Adur. From far away they could see the tall keep rising against the burnished blue sky while gulls circled the towers, their laughing cries echoing across the salty reed beds.

&nbs
p; Bertha, daughter of Milo of Gloucester, heiress of Brecknock and Upper Gwent, the wife of Sir William de Braose and Matilda’s mother-in-law, was waiting for her husband and son in the lofty great hall. She was a stout woman of middle height, some years older than her husband, with white hair falling in long plaits to her waist. Her eyes were brown as hazelnuts and very shrewd. She kissed Matilda coolly and then held her at arms’ length, scrutinizing her closely until the girl felt herself blushing uncomfortably beneath the uncompromising gaze.

  “So, my son’s bride,” Bertha announced at last. “Welcome to Bramber, child.” The words were not softened by a smile.

  Then Bertha turned aside, drawing her son with her, and Matilda was left standing alone. After a moment, William’s father joined her. He smiled. “I hope it won’t seem too strange, my dear,” he murmured. “My son is a good man. Harsh sometimes, but good.”

  Matilda lifted her green eyes to his and forced herself to return his smile, which was friendly enough. “Thank you, sir,” she whispered. “I am sure I shall do very well with William.” Happiness, they both knew, was not part of the marriage contract.

  She became conscious slowly that Sir William’s eyes had strayed beyond her. Someone was standing behind her near the hearth.

  “Lord de Clare! My wife told me you were here. Greetings.” The old man stretched out his hands with sudden warmth. Turning, Matilda saw he was addressing a slim young man, dressed in a scarlet mantle caught at the shoulder with gold. He had laughing hazel eyes and a shock of wheat-color hair.

  “Sir William, I was persuaded by Lady Bertha to wait for you.” Lord de Clare stepped forward to clasp his host’s hands. Then he turned to Matilda. He bowed, smiling. “Madam?”