Almost Innocent Read online

  The hunting party returned with much revelry and elation, bugles blowing, two stags slung across poles borne in the rear by four huntsmen apiece. The great hall resounded with their feasting, with the music of pipe and lyre, but Lord Bellair had decreed that today the women should dine apart, and Magdalen ate in her aunt’s company in the parlor, silently lamenting the unjust lot of women.

  Nor did she have private speech with Lord de Gervais before their departure, three days later, by which time she had decided that being betrothed was a sad and sorry condition, according none of the expected advantages. But not even this disgruntlement could spoil her excitement at the sight of the cavalcade drawn up in the place d’armes at dawn on the day of departure. A small troop of Lord Bellair’s men were to accompany them to the border of Bellair territory, as a matter of courtesy. The knights’ own force, refreshed after the generous hospitality they had been accorded, sat alert and ready, and the train of pack mules loaded with the baggage stood in resigned patience.

  Magdalen looked in vain for her own horse. Lord de Gervais was standing talking to her father when she hurried over. “I beg pardon for interrupting, sir, but where is my mount? I cannot see Malapert anywhere.”

  “You are to ride with me, Magdalen,” de Gervais informed her. “Your aunt and her women will ride pillion with the grooms.”

  “But I would ride by myself,” Magdalen blurted without thought for discourtesy. “I will not be carried like a baby.”

  Lord Bellair’s reaction to this insolence was entirely predictable. De Gervais interrupted the threats of summary punishment with a raised hand. “Nay, we will excuse the impertinence. If the child wishes to ride, then she may do so until she is fatigued.”

  “I will not become fatigued,” Magdalen declared stoutly, emboldened by this championship.

  “I will give you four hours at the outside,” he challenged, laughing. “Go and tell a groom to have your mount readied.”

  In her pleasure and relief, Magdalen failed to remark the subtle shift in authority revealed by that exchange. In any other circumstances, she would have been mightily puzzled that her father would have permitted the intercession of a stranger in such an instance. The intercession itself would ordinarily have been an unthinkable act. But Lord de Gervais was rapidly assuming godlike qualities in the child’s vivid imagination, and whatever he did was becoming invested with a magic that set his actions outside the normal run of things.

  Then came the flurry and excitement of departure. Lord Bellair promised that he would be in London within the year, and she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him with a fierceness that surprised him. She made a decorous farewell to the pages and then spoiled the effect with a broad grin and a mischievous wink. The servitors who had known her through her growing were there to call their good wishes, and she rode through the great gate and across the drawbridge, waving frantically over her shoulder at her home and wondering why she felt suddenly melancholy.

  Then the bugle sounded, and the thrilling prospect of what lay ahead drove all from her mind but the need to meet the Lord de Gervais’s challenge. She rode proudly upright at his side as the sun rose, and it was near midmorning before her aching back caused her shoulders to slump slightly. The third time she put her hand behind her in an unconscious gesture, rubbing the small of her back to ease the stiffness, Guy leaned down from his palfrey, caught her under the arms, and lifted her onto the saddle in front of him.

  “If you exhaust yourself this day, you will be fit for nothing on the morrow.”

  “But was it more than four hours?” she asked urgently.

  He smiled, looked up at the sun, and gave her the benefit of the doubt. “By a hair,” he said.

  With a sigh of satisfaction, Magdalen settled comfortably into the crook of his arm.

  Chapter Two

  It was May morning, a delicate cobweb of a morning dawning under a sky so pale as to be almost translucent, the faintest tinge of pink in the east offering the sun’s promise.

  “Up, you slugabeds. This is no morning for maids to be stewing beneath the sheets! You must bring in the May.” The words were laughingly spoken and a large hand swooped, stripping back the bedcovers, creating tickling havoc with the squealing, wriggling children, nesting like baby voles beneath.

  “Oh, ’tis our brother,” squeaked Mary obviously. “Is it time for the Maypole, sir?” She squirmed away from her half brother, giggling as he reached for her.

  “Lazybones, you will be lucky to see the Maypole at all. The bell for prime sounded some ten minutes ago,” he declared, catching her and swinging her out of the bed, the rest of his sisters jumping for his knees in a futile attempt to throw him off balance. Within an instant, they were joined by their equally exuberant little brothers from the next-door chamber, and the match became somewhat uneven.

  Magdalen watched the rough-and-tumble as she always did with the bedclothes pulled up tight over her nakedness. As always, part of her wished he would play with her in the same jolly, uninhibited way, but a larger part knew that she would sink with embarrassment if he did. He didn’t … he never did. The bed she shared with his cousin, Catherine, was always inviolate. When he called a halt to the morning’s game, he would greet the older two cheerfully, sometimes giving their hair a teasing tug, before leaving the bedchamber and his vociferous brood of brothers and sisters to their dressing.

  “My lord, they will never be ready if you do not cease this foolishness.” Lady Gwendoline, half laughing, half scolding, appeared in the open door. “Sounds of revelry are come already from beyond the gates, and it would be a sorry thing indeed if this house were the only one bereft of the May.”

  Her husband shook the children from him like a dog shaking his coat after the rain. “Make haste, then, or you will miss the crowning of the queen.”

  “I think Magdalen should be crowned May queen,” little Margaret announced. “She can dance better than anyone and has such pretty hair.”

  “Oh, such silliness, Meg,” Magdalen chided, blushing against the pillows.

  Guy de Gervais smiled at her. “I am not sure it is silliness. What do you think, my lady?” He turned to his wife, the tenderness of his smile as always overlaid with anxiety. It took no experienced eye to see that the Lady Gwendoline was in poor health. Her skin was of a deathly pallor, her body thin and frail, her eyes sunken.

  She stood leaning for support against the doorjamb and returned her husband’s smile. There was much love between them, and it was there for all to see. “I think the poor girl has been put to the blush quite sufficiently,” she said. “Do you go to your breakfast, husband, and leave the nurse to her work.”

  At the door, he turned as if reminded of something. “Magdalen, you and I are to journey to the city later this morning. It would be as well for you to dress with more than usual care.”

  He had gone before she had absorbed the statement sufficiently to respond. Her companions, however, burst into a chorus of envious speculation.

  “It must be about your wedding,” Catherine said, standing naked beside the bed and stretching. “But he did not say Edmund was to journey with you.”

  Magdalen’s head was buried in the clothes press, and her reply was muffled. “I am not to be wed for months yet,” she said more clearly, backing out with a gown of embroidered linen in her hands. “I do not seem to be growing quickly enough.” She looked with frank envy at the other girl’s budding breasts, the faint dusting of hair beneath her arms and at the base of her belly. “My Aunt Elinor said I could not expect to have my terms for a year at least.”

  “Then you are most fortunate,” declared Catherine. “For they are a great inconvenience, are they not, madame?”

  Gwendoline, who had been helping the nurse with the little ones’ dressing while listening without comment to the older girls’ conversation, agreed with a sigh. For her, the bleeding was more than an inconvenience; it was a near permanent condition and had been these last six months. She had trie
d physicians’ remedies and midwives’ cures. She had been cupped to the point of fainting, had lain upon her bed for weeks at a time, but nothing would stop the steady, life-draining flux. And now there was the pain, a deep inner stabbing that wrenched her vitals and took her breath away. But she had told no one of that. Guy could not bear the suffering that he knew about, and it was easier for her to endure in fortitude if she did not feel his pain and fear and anger.

  “But such a lack, Magdalen, will not delay your wedding, only the time at which you and your husband can be truly man and wife,” she said, wondering why no one had thought to explain this to the child before.

  “Oh.” Magdalen thought about this for a minute, then shrugged. It did not seem to make much difference. “Do you know why I am to go to London, my lady?” She fastened the buttons of her gown. “Is it then because of the wedding?”

  “It has something to do with it,” Lady Gwendoline said vaguely. “Lord de Gervais will explain all, I am certain. Let me tie your girdle. It is twisted at the back.”

  Why was it, Magdalen thought not for the first time, that one was so rarely afforded a straight answer to a straight question? Lady Gwendoline did know why she was to go to London, the child was sure of it. However, whatever the reason, the journey itself promised joy. Lord de Gervais’s exclusive company was a rare treat, and in the months since she had been established in his household, he had lost none of his divine luster.

  Finally dressed, the excited troop of children ran from their wing of the stone manor house. The house stood on a hill and was therefore not fortified with moat and drawbridge, although watchtowers stood at the corners of the outer walls. In one of the two inner courts, a group of young men, the pages and squires of the de Gervais household, waited for the children. Among them was Edmund de Bresse. As his betrothed came bounding down the hall steps, her plaits flying, he came toward her, in his hands a bunch of marigolds that he had picked along the riverbank before the first touch of the sun had dried the dew. He was very conscious of the correctness of his romantic gesture as he presented the bouquet with a flourishing bow.

  Magdalen looked both pleased and surprised, but the significance of the gift in terms of courtly etiquette completely escaped her, and she failed to respond to the bow with the appropriate curtsy. “Why, how pretty, Edmund. We will put some in our hair,” she said gaily, distributing the flowers among her companions. “But we must pick more in the fields as we go to the village, for we must all have crowns and garlands.”

  Guy watched the little scene with an inner smile. He approved Edmund’s gesture as indicative of chivalric lessons well learned, but Magdalen’s response showed how ill prepared she was to be the object of a suitor’s ardor. She had too little artifice in her nature, he reflected, perhaps ever to become adept at the game of flirtation. Edmund was doing his best, but his betrothed was more inclined to jump with joy at the prospect of a visit to the mews or a ride to hounds than she was to sentimental tunes on Edmund’s lyre or soulful walks in the pleasaunce. He rather suspected that soon the lad would give up and return to his neglected companions and the sport and training at arms that had always given him the most pleasure. And Lord de Gervais would not blame him, for all that he understood Magdalen’s inability to enter into the spirit of the game. When a girl was thrust directly from childhood into matrimony, there was little enough time for the development and enjoyment of romantic play.

  It was inappropriate in marriage, anyway, he reflected, turning back to the house. That institution was purely instrumental, and romantic entanglements were the province of illicit relationships. But even as he thought this, he caught a glimpse of Gwendoline through the arch to the second court talking with the steward. Her frailty tore at him. They both knew she had upon her the mark of death, and there were many nights when he knelt at the altar rail in the chapel praying for the strength to bear her loss.

  Ten years they had been married, he at sixteen, she at thirteen. During a lull in the long, drawnout conflict between England and France, he had been sent to England to the court of the Duke of Lancaster as page. John of Gaunt had taken a liking to the lad and had arranged the alliance for him with the powerful Saxon Redefordes. It was an alliance that transformed the fortunes of the younger son even as it brought him the responsibilities of an English liege lord, responsibilities which compelled his loyalty to his adopted land. Gwendoline brought him land and a dowry of majestic proportions, and with such possessions came power and an earldom. John of Gaunt’s personal patronage was extended to the Redeforde family in return, and the duke bought himself a vassal who could be trusted to act for him in the most delicate matters, as well as bear arms in his service and the service of the king.

  The union had been childless, but since the nurseries at Hampton had been occupied by Guy’s wards, both the lord and lady had had their hands filled with the concerns of children. There were inheritances to manage, educations to order, physical health to attend to, and marriages to arrange. And throughout all this ordering, the Duke of Lancaster’s thread had been sewn. The child responsibilities of his vassal were to be put to his own use, and in no more particular an instance as the wedding of de Gervais’s nephew to Magdalen of Bellair.

  “Guy?” Gwendoline left the steward and came through the arch to meet him, the extreme thinness of her frame accentuated by her close-fitting gown. “Have the children left?”

  “Yes, with much excitement. Poor Edmund presented Magdalen with a posy which she immediately distributed to the others, causing him some considerable mortification in front of his friends.” He laughed, slipping a hand beneath her arm as if in casual affection, yet they both knew that it was for support, although neither of them would acknowledge it openly.

  “I wonder what the duke will make of her,” mused the lady. “Let us walk in the orchard, my lord.”

  “I doubt he will trouble himself to make anything of her.” Guy turned toward the gate of the court. “He has shown no interest in her up to now. The child is merely a useful pawn. The church has granted legitimacy, finally. Rome is willing to accept that a binding contract existed between Isolde de Beauregard and the Duke of Lancaster before his first marriage, a contract subsequently dissolved, but nevertheless all children of the union are deemed legitimate.”

  “But Magdalen must have been conceived when the duke was married,” Gwendoline objected as they walked through the wicket gate leading to the orchard.

  “Nevertheless, Rome has decreed that she is legitimate,” her husband told her, reaching up to pluck a sprig of apple blossom. “Rome has been well paid to do so.” He placed the blossom behind her ear, where her hair curled beneath the white linen coif. “There, now you are queen of the May, sweet lady.” Bending, he touched his lips to hers, and she leaned into him.

  “I know how hard it must be for you, husband,” she whispered against the supple, weather-worn skin of his cheek. “I ache to lie with you again, and I am filled with such guilt that I cannot be a wife to you.”

  “Hush! What folly is this?” He sounded genuinely angry, and she shrank from this most unusual manifestation. “You may not speak so, Gwendoline. You are all the wife I wish for, and I will not hear you say otherwise.”

  “Nevertheless …” She steeled herself to say what she had long lacked the courage to say. “I would wish that you ease yourself in the way that men must. You must take a mistress—”

  “Be silent!” he interrupted her, horrified by her words, yet also horrified by the deep inner response he had to them. He was a young, virile man, accustomed to working his body hard and easing it with the same vigor, and the long months of chastity had tried him sorely, although he had done all he could to hide this from his suffering wife.

  “If you will not take a leman,” she persisted, her voice low, anguished with her own humiliation, “then you must visit the harlots in the stews.”

  “I have said I will not hear you talk in this wise,” he said harshly, “and you would do well to cease
this instant.” But even as he spoke so harshly, he took her in his arms, gentling her, wiping the tears from her cheeks with a smudging thumb. “Hush now, sweetheart, hush now. ’Tis no great matter for me. ’Tis nothing beside your sufferings.”

  “My sufferings are not so very great.” She gave him a watery smile. “I could endure them easily enough if it were not for the pain they cause you. But I pray daily with Father Benedict, and there is a woman in the village come from Shrewsbury who has most marvelous powers, Elfrida tells me. I will take counsel of her on the morrow.”

  Guy could place no faith in prayer or the miraculous powers of an itinerant dame, but he would not say so. Instead, he smiled and kissed his wife again. “Then you will soon be well. Let us go back to the house. The children will be returning, and I must take that misbegotten little rogue to her sire.” He spoke with a great softness, and his lady smiled with a tinge of sorrow. He was a man who loved children … a man who should have children of his own. But she would never bear him any.

  Magdalen had had a morning of unalloyed joy. May Day in the border fortress had tended to pass with little ceremony. There had been Maypoles in the surrounding villages, but there had been no one to take the child to participate in the revelry. Erin, her maidservant who had come with her from Bellair, had told her what went on in the village of her own childhood, and this morning’s experiences exactly matched those oft-told tales to which Magdalen had listened with aching envy. Barefoot, garlanded with primroses, bluebells, marigolds, and cowslip, they had danced around the Maypole, been chased across the dew-wet fields by the boys and youths of both village and manor while a troop of itinerant minstrels had played and sung the ancient, cheerfully ribald songs of virginity about to be lost.

  The manor children were now returning home, laughing and singing, their arms filled with May branches of apple and cherry blossom to fill the great hall of the manor. Magdalen cast Edmund covert glances from beneath her lashes. He had made a great point of catching her in the chase and an even greater play of kissing her soundly. She was not at all sure whether the experience had been pleasant, but Edmund was looking very pleased with himself, and everyone had laughed and cheered him on heartily. Her linen gown, carefully chosen for the journey to the city, was grass-stained and rumpled now, her hair escaped from its braids, the ribbons on her plaits hanging loose. But they were all in similar state, and there was no fear in the de Gervais household that such disarray would bring censure.