Orders from an enormous knight were not meant to be disobeyed and the man in the leather apron scampered off. As he ran, Brighton looked at her husband with irritation.
“I was handling the situation just fine,” she said.
He peered down his nose at her. “I could see that from the way he was rushing to do your bidding.”
Her eyes narrowed at him. “He would have if you had only been patient.”
Folding his enormous arms across his chest, he bent down so he could look her in the face. “I have been patient,” he whispered loudly. “I have been patient about this entire affair. I was patient when you demanded to come to Scotland and…”
“Demanded?”
“Aye, demanded. And I was patient when you wanted to bring my son because you could not leave him behind.”
“I am still feeding him! He is too young to be left behind!”
“You did not have to come now. You could have waited.”
Brighton’s entire face was a one big scowl that was now bordering on hurt. Too upset to argue with him, she simply turned away. He could see that he’d injured her feelings. Forcing himself to relent, which was difficult considering he knew he was in the right, he put his arm around her and pulled her to him.
“I am sorry,” he said, pretending to be contrite when he wasn’t in the least. “I did not mean to upset you. But you know I did not want you to come in the first place. This is something that could have easily been settled with a missive.”
Now Brighton was bordering on tears. “But I want to see her,” she whispered tightly. “I could not see her if I sent a missive.”
Patrick was feeling the least bit guilty now. He didn’t understand her drive to see a woman who had abandoned her at birth but perhaps that was because his own mother hadn’t. He still had her, and his father, and was secure in his relationship with them. Kissing the top of her head as an apology, he tried to hug her but she didn’t want to be hugged. In fact, she pulled away from him and now he was the one feeling badly. But the interplay between them was interrupted when a man suddenly appeared at the door.
“Who are ye?” he demanded in a throaty, ill-sounding voice. “What do ye want here?”
Both Patrick and Brighton looked at the man, seeing an individual who was an ashen gray color, with long, dirty hair and dressed in woolen clothing that looked as if he had been rolling around in the mud in it. He coughed again, spraying something out of his mouth. Patrick immediately pulled Brighton well back from the man. If he was sick, Patrick didn’t want either of them to contract it.
“My name is Patrick de Wolfe,” Patrick said steadily. “I am the commander of Berwick Castle and this is my wife, Brighton. My wife has come seeking Juliana de la Haye. Do you know her?”
The man’s eyes narrowed at them both, suspiciously. “Why do ye want her?” he rasped. “Why have ye come?”
Patrick wasn’t sure he should divulge everything. After all, telling someone that he had come seeking a woman who had borne a bastard child was a rather touchy piece of information. As he thought on a way to tactfully explain their presence, Brighton spoke up.
“I-I am her daughter,” she said simply. “She left me at Coldingham Priory twenty years ago and the nuns raised me, but I have come to meet my mother. Is she here?”
The man in the doorway suddenly lost all of his annoyance. He stared at Brighton, his expression going slack, and Patrick could feel himself tensing for what was to come. If the man tried to verbally abuse his wife in any way, he was going to get his neck snapped. So, he waited; they both waited, until the man in the doorway seemed to overcome his shock.
“Ye… ye lived at Coldingham?” he finally asked, his voice considerably less hostile.
Brighton nodded. “Aye.”
The man seemed to stare at her an inordinately long time. “Juliana’s lass?”
“Aye!”
“Ye look like her.”
Brighton’s heart soared with hope. “P-please… do you know her, then?”
He nodded. Then, he lowered his gaze and pulled out a filthy kerchief from the top of his tunic, wiping his nose and eyes with it. When he finally spoke, he was looking at the kerchief.
“Lass,” he said, “ye dunna know what ye’re askin’.”
Brighton looked at Patrick in confusion before responding. “W-what do you mean?” she asked. “You do know her, don’t you?”
The man continued to wipe at his nose as if pondering the question, which put Brighton increasingly on edge. The hope so recently in her heart was fading quickly.
“I havena heard that name in a long time,” he muttered. “A very long time. Juliana.”
Even Patrick was becoming anxious. “Answer my wife. Do you know Juliana?”
The man stopped wiping his nose and looked up at them both. “Aye, I do,” he said. “She’s me sister.”
“Is she here?”
“She’s dead.”
Brighton’s heart sank and her hope was completely dashed. She sighed heavily, looking up at Patrick with such sad eyes that he immediately felt very sorry for her. He put his arm around her, comfortingly, feeling sadness that their quest for her mother had come to an abrupt end. Not that he was surprised, but it was still sad.
“Then I thank you for your time,” he said quietly, pulling his reluctant wife away from the door. “We are sorry to have disturbed you.”
“Dunna ye want tae know what happened?”
Brighton wouldn’t be so easily led away when the old man asked that question. She paused. “I-I do,” she said eagerly. “Would you please tell me?”
From the way the old man asked the question, Patrick wasn’t so sure it was a good idea for Brighton to know what had become of her mother. But he wouldn’t pull her away. He feared she would resent him if he did. She had been eager to know of her mother for well over a year, ever since her separation from Coldingham, so Patrick thought she’d better hear all of it. They’d come this far. Therefore, he paused right along with her, standing next to her as they waited for the old man to tell them.
It wasn’t long in coming.
“I’m Gilbert, Juliana’s brother,” he said. “I was here when Juliana returned from the land of the Northmen, pregnant with a bastard child. With ye. Before ye were born, she tried tae run away because she knew our da wouldna let her keep the bairn. But me da… he was a devil, he was. He brought her back and locked her away until she had her child.”
Brighton was listening to the tale with great distress. She could feel Patrick’s hand on her back, comfortingly. “A-and then… then he forced her to give me to Coldingham?”
Gilbert nodded. “Right after ye were born,” he said. “He made her go. She was so weak; too weak tae travel but he made her go. I went with her. I was there when she handed ye tae the mother prioress.”
A mother prioress who was now locked away at York, doing a lifetime of penitence for her crime. Brighton actually found it both interesting and validating to finally hear of her delivery to Coldingham from someone who had been there, but she had no intention of telling Gilbert what they had actually delivered her into – into a plot of vengeance. Nay, she wouldn’t tell him that. There was no reason to. It was all in the past now.
“A-and then what?” she asked.
Gilbert leaned against the stone door jamb, weary in his recollection of a distant memory. “She came back here and me da locked her away again,” he said. “She was kept in the room as punishment for her sins, never leavin’. But me da… he was still seekin’ tae make an alliance with her, with someone who wouldna know of her shame. He finally found an alliance with the MacNaughton Clan far tae the north, where no one would know of me sister’s sin and of her bearin’ a bastard. But me sister had a mind o’ her own… she refused tae marry the man and the day before she was tae leave for the north, threw herself from the north tower. Killed herself, she did, and sometimes on moonless nights, ye can hear her screams as she plummets to the earth.”
&nbs
p; Brighton gasped, a hand flying to her mouth in horror as Patrick simply closed his eyes with regret. Deep-seated regret that he permitted Brighton to hear the fate of her mother. He silently cursed the old man, knowing that those words would be the last and only memory Brighton had of her mother. In fact, he resisted the urge to strangle that foolish old man.
“O-oh… no,” Brighton gasped. “That is a horrible tale. My poor mother!”
Tears filled her eyes and Patrick came up behind her, putting his arms around her to comfort her. Brighton pressed her face into his tunic, turning her head away from the old man so he wouldn’t see her weep.
But Patrick wasn’t so subtle; he looked at Gilbert pointedly. “You did not have to be so blunt,” he said, his voice low and threatening. “My wife has come here to know of her mother’s fate, not of her grisly end.”
Gilbert wasn’t intimidated by the big English knight; he simply shrugged. “If she dinna want tae know all of it, then she shouldna have come.”
There was truth to that but Patrick was too angry to comment. His concern now was to remove Brighton and head for home. Now that she knew the truth, hopefully, her curiosity would be satisfied.
But Brighton wouldn’t be led away quite so easily. When she realized Patrick was trying to turn her away, she gently pushed from his embrace, wiping at her eyes as she looked at Gilbert again.
“C-can you really hear her screams?” she asked. “From the tower, I mean. Is it true?”
Gilbert had to admit that he was feeling some pity for the young woman. He thought he’d lost that ability long ago, but looking at the daughter of his sister and seeing the resemblance, he began to feel compassion for Juliana again. Compassion for a young woman he had been so fond of.
“Aye,” he told her. “I’ve heard them meself. Juliana was me sister and I… I loved her. She was a good lass but she fell in love with a Dane. She loved him tae the end. That was why she wouldna marry the MacNaughton. Dyin’… it was her only way out.”
That news tore out Brighton’s heart; her mother had loved Magnus until the end, just as Magnus had repeatedly spoke of his love for Juliana. Two lovers who could never be together, who had produced a daughter with that love. Brighton was coming to understand that she was the product of a love that would never die, something powerful that still lived on. It lived in her and now in little Markus. In that thought, she gave herself comfort.
True love never dies.
“I-I know Magnus,” she said. “The Dane you speak of, the one that Juliana loved… I know him. He is a good man and we have been able to establish our family bonds. But it was tragic that he and Juliana could not marry. He never stopped loving her, either.”
Gilbert’s sympathy was in his features. The kerchief came out again and he began wiping his nose. “Then I will tell her that,” he said quietly. “On the next moonless night, I will tell her that the Dane still loves her. Mayhap that will give her spirit some rest.”
“I-is she buried close by that I might visit her grave?”
That question seemed to hit Gilbert particularly hard. “The priests wouldna allow her tae be buried in the church yard,” he said. “We buried her outside the yard beneath an oak tree. The grave was meant tae be unmarked but I went back later and put a big rock atop her grave. If ye turn the rock over, ye’ll see a cross I carved intae it. Even if me da and the priests were willin’ tae forget her, I couldna. She deserved better.”
Brighton was touched at the length Juliana’s brother went to for her. She could also see how it pained the man to speak on her. Truth was, it was painful for her, too. She wasn’t entirely sure how she was going to tell Magnus what had become of the woman he loved but she would have to think of something. Politely, she thanked Gilbert for the information.
“Y-you have been kind and gracious to tell me what became of my mother,” she said. “May I ask you one final question?”
“Aye.”
“M-my name…,” she began hesitantly. “She told the nuns at Coldingham that my name was Brighton de Favereux. Do you know why she decided upon that name?”
Gilbert smiled faintly. “Yer birthname was a Northman name and she knew she couldna send ye tae the priory with that name, so she changed it,” he said. “De Favereux is from our Norman grandmother, our mum’s mother. And Brighton… when we were young, our da took us tae the south. He was a bit of a wanderer and felt that we should see somethin’ of the world, so he took us all the way south tae a place called Brighton. It was by the sea. Juliana said it was the most beautiful place she’d ever seen, just like heaven. I suppose that’s why she called ye that – because ye were the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, just like heaven.”
It was a sweetly poignant explanation of her name and Brighton couldn’t help but smile. Patrick had heard it, too, and he smiled at her, glad to see that something in all of this had given her a small measure of joy. For all of its sorrow, perhaps this trip hadn’t been without a tiny measure of happiness, after all.
“Thank you again for your time,” Patrick said, reaching out to take his wife’s hand. “Since you are my wife’s uncle, should you ever need anything, do not hesitate to send word to Berwick Castle. We are family, after all.”
That thought hadn’t really occurred to Gilbert. His eyebrows lifted in shock. “Me?” he asked. “A kin tae a Sassenach? They’ll run me out of Scotland!”
He said it in jest and Patrick grinned at the man, gently pulling Brighton away from the entry and back out to the yard where their escort waited. Gilbert was still snorting with laughter as he closed the door. Patrick and Brighton made their way towards little Markus, who quickly recognized his parents. He began to crow in delight and kick his little feet as Brighton reached out to take her son from Colm.
“Well?” Colm said. “Did you find out what you wanted to know?”
Patrick eyed Brighton, unsure how to respond, but she was kissing the baby, wiping the drool from his chin. Then, her attention moved inevitably to the manse and the massive towers on one side of it.
“Atty?” she asked. “Which tower would be the north tower?”
Patrick looked at the towers, glancing up at the sun and then to the landscape around them. Rolling green hills and bright skies greeted him as he determined their orientation.
“That one,” he said. “The one closest to us.”
Brighton craned her neck back to look at the tower, which was at least four stories high and possibly more. She really couldn’t tell. After a split-second of indecision, she began walking towards the tower with the baby still in her arms. Patrick watched her go.
“Where is she going?” Colm asked. “Did she discover anything about her mother?”
Patrick nodded, his gaze never leaving his wife. “She did,” he said. “I will tell you about it later. Gather the men, now. We must be ready to leave.”
As Colm went off to prepare the escort, Patrick continued to stand there and watch Brighton as she walked all the way to the tower and just stood there, looking up at it. He knew why and thought that it would be best if she dealt with this aspect of it alone. In reconciling herself to her mother’s tragic death, that was something she had to do on her own. But he would be here if she needed him.
He would always be here for her if she needed him.
And Brighton knew that. She knew Patrick had not come with her to the tower out of respect and she appreciated it. She was intensely curious about the tower her mother threw herself from, even going so far as to inspect the ground at the base of the tower where her mother had undoubtedly landed in a heap. It was intensely heartbreaking to think that she had been cursed to repeat her tragic death every time there was a moonless night, condemned to throw herself from the top of the tower for eternity. Perhaps that was her penitence for her crime. As the baby cooed and chewed on his fingers, Brighton found herself gazing up at the top of the tower.
“M-Mother?” she said quietly. “’Tis me. ’Tis Brighton. I came here looking for you but was
told of your tragic circumstances. I simply wanted to tell you that I forgive you everything. I know you took me to Coldingham because you had no choice. It was not your fault. I did not have a bad life there, in fact. The nuns took care of me. They educated me. Although I did not expect to marry, I have been fortunate enough to have married a man I love deeply. He is the most wonderful man in the entire world and we are very happy together. And look – we have a son. His name is Markus. We let Magnus choose the name. Did you hear me? Magnus, the man you love and my father, chose our son’s name. I hope you can hear me because I want you to know that he never stopped loving you. Even though he has a wife and children, you are his first love. He comes to visit us regularly and he is a truly remarkable man. I thought you would like to know. We are all happy, Mother. I wish you could be part of this joy but my prayer for you is that you find some peace.”
The only response was the sound of the wind as it whistled through the stones of the tower. No ghostly motherly appearance, no voice from beyond. Simply silence. But Brighton didn’t mind; she actually found a great deal of comfort in speaking to the last place her mother ever saw alive. Somehow, it was cathartic to her soul.
“P-please, Mother, find peace,” she said again, more softly now. “I do not want you to be sad or lonely any longer. Although I did not know you, I love you and will only speak fondly of you. My son will grow up knowing the story of his grandmother who loved very deeply. Be happy, my sweet mother, wherever you are.”
There were tears in her eyes as she turned from the tower, carrying the baby back to the escort that was waiting for her. But the tears weren’t completely those of sadness; there were some tears of joy, as well. Joy for a mother who understood what it was to love deeply and completely. Brighton hoped that wherever her mother’s spirit happened to be, that she had heard her.
That was her prayer.
And it was a prayer answered. Beginning with the next moonless night, the screams were never heard from again.
* THE END *
Nunnery Brides Page 65