“You are no longer in the nunnery, love. Great ladies do not muddy their hands in the dirt.”
“I am not great anymore, if I ever was.”
He kissed my lips then, the warmth of his breath touching me like a blessing as he drew away. “I did not see you when you were younger, my lady, but I do not know how you could ever be more beautiful than you are now.”
I felt a little of the wall around my heart cave as I lay with him, his strength beneath me, and the steady beat of his heart. I kissed him back, and we left off talking. I have never felt as safe as I did with him.
Of all the men I knew over the course of my long life, he loved me the most.
The next morning, I stood in the garden, watching my husband’s people tend the neat rows of plants. The rows fanned out in circles around quince and pear trees. Some plants, the ones that needed it, had shade, and the others stood against the walls of the garden, drinking in sunlight. It was early, and there was not much light. I stood and let the sun warm my uncovered hair.
William found me that way, watching his people as they did what I had been raised to do during my years in the nunnery – work I no longer did.
“You might take it up again,” he said.
It was often so with us, that we would begin a conversation in the middle, as one already in progress, with no need for explanation or clarity. It was as if he knew my thoughts, in a way in which I would never know his.
His eyes looked red from sleeplessness, and I wondered if he, too, had been up late entertaining, as I had been. The thought caused me a little pain, and I pushed it away.
“I have thought of it,” I said. “I have also wondered if I might have been better suited to a religious life, tending the plants among the sisters, instead of being out in the world among men.”
I said this by way of apology for publicly taking a lover and dragging his name as well as my father’s through the midden. I did not regret taking Jean Pierre as my lover, for he was good to me, and I loved him in a way I had loved no other. I could not repent of the sin of loving him, but as I faced my husband, for the first time, I was ashamed.
William seemed to sense this, for he knew me better than I ever knew him. He reached out and took my hand and raised it to his lips. “I, for one, am glad that you are here, and among us.”
That was all we said of my shame. As I stood there, I felt it fall away from me as a cloak onto a tiled floor. William kept my hand in his as he smiled down at me. “Lady, I have a house along the seacoast. It is built for watching for raiders, though none ever come.”
“No Vikings, husband?”
He smiled, drawing my hand to his arm where I let it rest as he led me along the paths of the kitchen garden. “Few, lady, and none in my lifetime.”
My lips quirked, and I thought to say that he had not been alive long. His eyes sparkled. He seemed to be thinking the same thing himself.
We walked under the shade of a pear tree. The fruit was hanging heavy, for it was midsummer, but it had not yet begun to ripen. William looked toward the kitchen building and saw that we were alone. The gardeners had gone back inside, and there was no one in the yard but the two of us.
“I have a house on the sea, my lady …”
“And you want me to go there?”
We stopped walking, and he looked down at me. I had forgotten how tall he was, and how broad his shoulders. He was growing into his stature. He had been a beautiful boy when I met him, but it seemed now, two years later, that my husband was becoming a man. His blue eyes were clear, like the water in a fathomless lake, but I could not see into their depths. They were closed to me. I thought of Jean Pierre, and how his eyes showed all he felt, how his love for me was a thing he was proud of.
I took my hand from his. A bird came from across the yard and landed in the tree above us. As we stood and faced each other, it started singing.
“Yes,” he said.
We stood alone, the songbird our only witness. I wanted in that moment to beg him to love me, to turn from my brother who would never love him back and to reach for me, the woman who would love him all his life.
But I saw enough in his eyes to know that such words could not be spoken between us, then or ever. He was young, no matter how tall he grew. With the constancy and certainty that only the young possess, he still believed that he would love my brother and my brother alone until the day he died.
I sighed and put the loss of my husband away in the mass of sorrows I kept over my heart. I turned my mind from it. Joy was to be found in the present moment. My sorrows were all in the past. Across the garden, I saw Jean Pierre emerge from the house, dressed in leather for the hunt. He had come to see me before he went riding out.
I stepped away from my husband. “As you say, William. I will go to the sea. The salt air will do me good, as long as I don’t have to go out in a boat.”
William smiled. It seemed I saw something, annoyance perhaps or a touch of jealousy, flash behind his eyes before he masked it. “A ship, lady. Boats large enough to go out on the Channel are called ships.”
I laughed in spite of myself, the pain at being sent away from him dulled in the answering light in his eyes. I reminded myself that whatever else was true, this man was my friend, and was offering me a way to have my lover and leave his court in peace.
“You will return before the snows come,” he said. “I can only spare you a month or two. After that, Marie will begin to pine.”
It was kind of him to say so. Though my daughter loved me, Marie Helene was her real mother now. I had only borne her and then given her up to the care of others.
William bent down from his great height and kissed me. His lips were like a feather on my skin. I did not move, and then the slight pressure of his lips was gone. He left me standing among the flowers, and my lover came to meet me and take my hand. They were to go out riding together, hunting deer for supper.
Jean Pierre said nothing but looked down on me with love in his eyes. He kissed me, and I felt the pressure of his lips like a lifeline, tying me to the earth, and to what I could have, all my longing for what could not belong to me fading like a ghost.
“I love you,” I said when he drew away.
He searched my eyes and saw that I was not lying. “And I love you.”
He answered only after consideration, after seeing clearly that I did not offer him pap to soothe him but spoke only the truth from my heart. There were many kinds of love. I discovered that just as I had loved Henry and Richard, so I loved Jean Pierre and William. They were such different men, and with each, I was a different woman.
“We are going away,” I said. “We are to stay in a house by the sea, far from my husband’s court.”
“If you wish it, I will follow you to the end of the earth.” His voice was low and even.
I kissed him again, before drawing away to lead him out of the garden. “That won’t be necessary. Just to the sea, where we can eat fish everyday.”
“So, it will be like Lent,” he said, his eyes smiling.
I laughed and drew him close for one more kiss. “No, my lord. Nothing like Lent.”
The house was less than a day’s travel on horseback. After kissing my daughter and Marie Helene good-bye, we left the next day for my husband’s house by the sea. The place was old and rarely used.
The villagers were fishermen and watch-keepers only. They bowed to me and took off their hats, but I saw suspicion in their eyes. At first, I thought they judged me as an adulteress, but then I saw that it was the suspicion of country people for those not their own. I put them from my thoughts, for my husband had sent servants with us to keep me in state, a gardener to reclaim the grounds, a cook to make our dinner, and a gamekeeper in case Jean Pierre chose to go hunting.
William did not see me off when I left. Only Marie Helene came to say good-bye, my daughter in her arms, wriggling to climb down and run to me as I sat on my tall horse. My eyes filled with tears to see my only living child fig
ht to come to me, and Jean Pierre took my hand in his. I felt the warmth of his skin through my glove, and my tears receded.
“We do not have to go, my lady,” he said.
I looked up at my husband’s house, to the windows of his rooms. He had not come down to see me off.
“Yes, we do,” was all I said before we rode away.
The ride cheered me, for I had become, if not an accomplished horsewoman, at least a competent one. High summer had the land in its grip, so we rode past fields of grain that were turning from green to gold. In another month they would be harvested and milled for bread.
We rode slowly, sometimes holding hands. Jean Pierre never worried that others would think him less of a man for loving me. I felt as if I had been given a little of my youth back when I was with Jean Pierre, a little of the time of simple pleasures that had been stolen from me to shore up the political power of others.
The house was barely three rooms wide. The servants lived in a separate building. William had sent word the day before that we were coming, so the few rooms were clean.
The entire top floor was the bed chamber, warmed by the fireplace that blazed in the room below. The warmth was welcome at night, when the wind came up from the sea.
There was a cliff near the house that looked down on the Channel itself. We went walking there almost every day, the wind blowing our cloaks tight around us. Sometimes I would leave mine behind at the house on purpose, so that I would have to share his.
For a man of action, Jean Pierre was very patient during our time together. I thought he might be restless and long for the excitement of the hunt, if not the court itself. But he seemed content to sit with me in the evenings by the fire after the servants had left, and to walk with me for miles during the day, eating the bread and cheese and fruit the cook had packed for us. The wine we brought from my husband’s house and drank along that rocky shore was the sweetest of my life, and the nights I slept there were the most contented and dreamless.
One night, after our first month there, we lay together on the sagging bed. Though the feather mattress was fresh from my husband’s house, the ropes of the bed were loose. I meant to have the servants replace them, but I never did. The creaking of those old ropes sounded like the sea outside our windows, and the wind that never stopped blowing from the cliffs.
The creaking of those ropes wakes me sometimes even now when I dream of them. I think myself safe in Jean Pierre’s arms again, the fire of the brazier close beside us, the curtains of the bed drawn to keep out the chill. In those dreams, I feel his arms around me, and I wake with tears on the bolster under my head.
But this was long before he visited me in dreams, when I was still blessed to feel his arms around me in truth. That night as we lay together, sleep was far from us. We listened to the wind as it blew against the stone of the house, working its way around the shutters that were locked fast.
His hair was golden in the firelight, for we had not yet drawn the bed curtains. I ran my hand over the gold of his hair, which smelled of the salt of the sea. For we had walked that day along the cliff, as we did every day, unless it was raining. On rainy days we often did not get out of bed, much to the disapproval of the local gossips. In such a small place, as at court, everyone knew everything.
Our own people kept us comfortable, though, and our little house was snug and safe as no place else has ever been for me. Jean Pierre seemed to feel it, too, for he never went hunting, nor did he seem to long for the excitement of Paris, with the fine meals in the royal hall and the constant amusements of the court. We were content in each other’s company. That night we savored our time alone for what it was, a stolen season.
“I wish your brother had married you to me.” Jean Pierre did not look at me when he said this but stared into the fire.
I saw that a brooding mood had taken him, as it sometimes did. I pressed myself against him and drew his eyes back to me. “My lord, my marriage is a political one. The king had need of my husband, and when he no longer did, he gave him to me.”
It was the closest I ever came to speaking of the lack of love between my husband and myself, the broken places in my marriage that I thought would never heal. Jean Pierre did not press me with questions as another man might have, but drew me close, and kissed my hair where it curled against my cheek.
“We are safe from politics here,” he said.
I opened my mouth to agree with him, but his lips were on mine then, and we lost ourselves in love play. That was our last unfettered night, for the next morning, I woke with the first of my sickness, and could not eat until well after noon. Though we stayed a few more weeks, trying to cling to the idyll, to the stolen time we could not keep, it was never the same again after that night.
I was pregnant, and the weight of our child lay between us, the knowledge that another man would raise his son as his own. Jean Pierre would someday have to go about the business of arranging a marriage for himself, so that his father’s line might not die out. We knew from the next morning on that the child of his heart would belong to another man. The son he longed to have for his heir would have to be left with me.
17
A Son
My husband heard the news that I was to bear yet another man’s child. As Jean Pierre and I stood before him, I watched William for some sign of pain or anger and. I saw none. Only a tightening along his jaw, before he took me in his arms to give me the kiss of peace.
Jean Pierre refused to let me speak to my husband alone, for fear William might strike me to avenge his honor. Jean Pierre did not understand our relationship, as indeed I did not. Perhaps he thought that William would challenge him to a duel. Of course, my husband did not. After letting me go, William announced again that Jean Pierre was welcome in his house for as long as he wished to stay.
Later that evening, as William led me into dinner, he and I were able to speak. “Your man has a care for your honor,” he said.
“Yes. It is a shame that I do not.”
William laughed. “Your brother is cursing my name.”
“All the kingdom knows that you let your wife run wild.”
For all the love that lay between Jean Pierre and me, he was not a great one for laughter. William and I had found a comfortable place with each other where, if my wishful longing did not intrude, laughter always found us.
“It is my concern if I like a wild wife. They need not trouble themselves on our account.”
I was still laughing when William handed me into my chair, where Jean Pierre waited, seated beside me.
I saw the light of jealousy in his eyes. I leaned over and kissed him. “I love you,” I whispered so that only he would hear me, so that he would not forget. I knew a little of what it cost him to live in my husband’s house.
Jean Pierre never allowed our situation to unman him, as a lesser man might have done. He accepted the limits of our life together and never reproached me for things I could not change.
He kissed me back, his lips lingering on mine, until my husband’s court sent up a cheer, breaking into our reverie. I looked up, startled, but I did not pull away.
My husband raised his glass to us, and his smile wished us well. I saw something in his eyes, a shadow that he quickly hid from me, one that I never saw again all through that pregnancy.
It was evening, and my stomach had long since settled from the morning’s queasiness. Jean Pierre drew our trencher close to us and cut a piece of roasted venison for me. He fed it to me with his fingertips, since all the rest of my husband’s people had gone back to their own meals and their own lovers and friends. Even my husband had turned from us to his own current favorite, the young man named Gregory. We were alone in the midst of all those people.
“I killed this buck for you, lady.”
I took the meat from his fingers with my lips, longing for the time when the meal would end, and we would be alone once more.
I drew back to take up my glass of wine and caught my husband’s ey
e. He had been watching me, his face unreadable. When I discovered him staring, he only smiled at me.
I turned my thoughts from my husband, who sat with his own lover beside him. I turned from William once more and met my own lover’s kiss. Jean Pierre tasted sweet, like the wine he had been drinking. Even as we sat there, the moment had the soft, gentle quality of a memory.
As the sickness of early pregnancy receded, I felt again the great calm that came over me every time I was bearing. My son began to move inside me. I would take Jean Pierre’s hand and place it under my heart, so that he too could feel our child move.
My husband had already acknowledged the child, even as the baby lay still in my womb. This cost Jean Pierre more than his honor, and still, he never reproached me.
I found myself most contented away from my husband’s house, sitting in the high grass near the river where the irises and daisies grew. Marie Helene would bring Marie, along with all my daughter’s retainers, and we would sit in state in the sunlight, my daughter’s people fanning out around her, ready to serve her every whim.
In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, Marie would often leave them to come and sit by me. I had my own blanket in the grass, until I grew too big to sit on the ground. After that, Jean Pierre would have them bring a folding chair. This leather chair was something he had found on Crusade, and he told me that the Saracens used them when on campaign. I laughed when he told me that, wondering aloud if it was sacrilegious to sit on one. He frowned until he caught me smiling, and then he laughed with me.
My daughter would come to me and sit on this chair, her slender hips taking up room next to mine. When I grew too wide for this, I would place her on my lap, and we would make daisy chains. Mine always held irises and daisies, too. We would wear them like crowns back to the keep before sunset, and my husband would greet us with smiles, saying we were the princesses of his heart.
Princess Of France (The Queen's Pawn Book 2) Page 16