Almost Innocent Read online

  Standing on the battlements, she had stared out across the plain until spots began to dance in front of her eyes. The sentinels in the watchtowers would see them coming before she did, and the subsequent bell ringing would reach her wherever she might be in the castle. But she still stood, exposed to the bitter snow-tipped wind, straining her eyes into the distance.

  The bell clanging its alert from the eastern tower came the instant before she herself could make out the slight shifting on the horizon. In the courtyard below, the call to ride out was heard, and the sounds drifted upward of men running, booted feet ringing, iron-shod hooves clattering, harness jingling. She turned to lean over the parapet, looking down on the scene. Lord Bellair was about to mount his palfrey. He was dressed with his usual lack of adornment, a heavy plain wool surcote over his tunic, but he rode forth to greet his guests with an escort that could only do them honor.

  Magdalen left the battlements and on impulse crossed the inner court and went through the arch to the outer ward. Mad Jennet’s hovel was still standing against the far wall, its outer structure sadly in need of patching, the reed-thatched roof showing gaps. But smoke curled from the central chimney hole, and the flicker of a tallow candle showed in the unshuttered window.

  She had no time to pay this visit, yet some powerful need that she could not put into words was driving her. She pushed aside the skin at the doorway and stepped within. These days, when she visited the old woman, it was always to bring her something from the stillroom to ease her aching limbs, or a basket from the kitchen to fill her empty belly. Occasionally since her return to Bellair, she had prevailed upon the castle servants to clean out the filthy rushes and lay fresh, but the stench still caused her to put a hand across her mouth and nose.

  “Jennet?” She could make out nothing for a moment in the dimness, then saw the huddle on the straw pallet in the corner. “Are you ailing, Jennet?”

  A knotted, twisted hand emerged from the filthy scrap of blanket. “Fetch the friar to me, child. I’m minded to lay down this mortal coil.” The old voice creaked like unoiled leather. “I’d be shriven before I die.”

  Magdalen peered at the wizened face. She had no idea how old mad Jennet could be. The woman herself probably didn’t know. But she’d been occupying this corner of the outer ward for as long as Magdalen could remember, and she’d never looked any younger.

  “My husband comes within the hour,” she heard herself say. “And another with him. Will you read the water for me, Jennet, one last time?”

  “Give me your hand.” The command was surprisingly crisp, issuing from a toothless mouth set in a near skeletal head, the scalp gleaming white beneath lank wisps of dirty gray hair, the cheeks fallen in, eyes sunk so deep in their sockets they were almost invisible.

  Hesitantly, Magdalen held out her hand. The twisted claw grasped it, turned it palm up. “Raise the candle; my eyes fail.” Magdalen lifted the reeking tallow candle from the floor by the pallet and held it up. There was silence in the frigid gloom. Then Jennet fell back on the pallet. “Love,” she said. “There is love, much of it, the love of men; there is love and blood in your hand, daughter of Isolde.”

  “How could you know that was my mother’s name?” Magdalen felt a fear greater than she had ever experienced. She knew nothing of her mother beyond the bare bones of circumstance she had been given.

  “Send the friar to me. I would have absolution.”

  Magdalen stood irresolute, unable to believe that Jennet would not expand on her cryptic statement. But then she heard the piercing call of the bugle, announcing the approach of her future, and she knew that her time of hiding in the shadows was drawing to a close. “I will tell Father Clement.”

  She slipped outside and hurried into the donjon.

  “Oh, there you are!” Elinor came down the staircase into the hall, her cheeks pinkened by her morning’s exertions. “I have been looking everywhere for you.” She tucked a straying gray lock back beneath her linen coif. “I had thought you were to give order for fresh rushes to be laid in the hall, but when I came in a minute ago it was not done and now there is no time before they arrive.”

  “Your pardon, madame.” Magdalen looked at the floor at her feet. “It slipped my mind. But indeed they are quite fresh, still. They have been down but a week.”

  “Maybe so, maybe so,” Elinor muttered. “But I would not be lacking in due courtesy to our guests. Have you made all seemly in your husband’s chamber? I have ordered matters in the Lord de Gervais’s apartment, and the dorter for his knights and attendants, but I think it is for you to look to your husband’s comfort.”

  “Yes, madame, and I have done so,” Magdalen said, tossing back her hood, revealing the rich dark coils of hair confined with a delicate silver filigree fillet. “There is a good fire and water heating. The sheets and hangings are new washed, the floor swept.”

  “And are you yourself clothed to do him honor?” Elinor peered shortsightedly. She was very flustered. She had had little or nothing to do with weddings and beddings in her reclusive spinsterhood, but she wished to conduct matters correctly. Since the bride and groom had been separated immediately after the wedding feast, Elinor saw this coming reunion as a simple extension of the wedding, but whether it should be conducted on those lines or not she did not know. They were, after all, a married couple of some years’ standing.

  Magdalen loosed her mantle, exposing her gown of turquoise silk and the cream brocade surcote, trimmed with the royal ermine to which her paternity entitled her. “Will this do, madame?”

  “Oh, yes, it is most suitable.” Elinor looked relieved. It did appear as if Magdalen were able to take charge of this situation herself, so perhaps Elinor could let matters go their own way. “I must repair to the kitchens. There was some difficulty with the roasting of the swans. One of the scullions neglected to oil the spit. Do you be ready to greet your husband in the court.”

  Magdalen smiled as the lady whom she no longer called aunt hastened into the kitchen, muttering anxiously. It was strange how these two, who had governed her early life with such absolute authority, had now become quite ordinary souls, with their faults and foibles, their kindnesses and virtues. Magdalen called one of the servitors to her and sent him with Jennet’s summons to the chaplain, then moved restlessly to the door of the great hall. The wind was gusting, lifting the rushes at the doorway and sending smoke belching from the hearth. The dogs, crowded near the fire for warmth, blinked against the smoke and moved backward. If the wind did not veer before late afternoon, the feasting in the hall would be a mite uncomfortable, but that was an ordinary enough hazard.

  She stood on the steps of the hall, waiting, both eager and apprehensive.

  The bugle call at the drawbridge set her pulses beating fiercely for all that she had been expecting it from minute to minute. She could see through the far arch into the place d’armes as the sizable combined force appeared in files of three from the drawbridge. The Lancastrian standard flew beside the dragon of Gervais and the falcon of Bresse. At the head rode the Lord Bellair and his two guests.

  Magdalen walked down the steps to the court as pages came running from the hall with the stirrup cups of welcome. She stood at the bottom, her palms moist, as the cups were proffered, the contents quaffed.

  Edmund de Bresse bore only superficial resemblance to the lad she remembered, the squire who had picked marigolds for her and kissed her on May Day. He was lean and hard, his face bronzed, his mouth and chin set firm in the manner of one grown accustomed to command, and he wore well the knight’s spurs and belt, the great sword at his waist.

  Even as she became aware of these things, her eyes sought Guy de Gervais. He looked as he always had done, except that his hair was now close-cropped. His eyes were as blue, his frame as powerful, his smile as merry, for he was laughing at something the Lord Bellair had said. The heaviness of his grief in those last days at Hampton seemed to have slipped from him.

  She moved to Edmund’s stir
rup. “I bid you welcome, my lord, and thank God for your safe return and the success of your enterprise.”

  He looked down at her, his eyes raking her face as if he too would see what changes the years of his absence had wrought upon the bride he barely knew. “My thanks, lady,” he said, handing his bridle to his squire, standing ready to receive it. He dismounted and took her hand, raising it to his lips.

  “Forsooth, Edmund, is that any way to greet your wife!” Guy swung from his own horse and came over to them. “It’s a kiss she needs.” Laughing, he cupped her face and kissed her brow. “You must pardon him, pippin, but we have been long in the field and have sorely missed gentle company.”

  His tone was teasing yet affectionate, just as it used to be, and Magdalen felt a sharp stab of acute disappointment, followed rapidly by resentment. Could he see no change in her, that he would treat her like the little girl she had been?

  She inclined her head in haughty acknowledgment and turned back to her husband. “Pray come within, my lord.” She led the way up the steps and into the hall.

  Guy was both hurt and puzzled. He had been about to offer some light compliment on her very clear beauty, and she had dismissed his greeting with all the cold arrogance of the Plantagenets. He had had little time or opportunity to think of her in the last years. The campaign in Picardy had been hard fought and hard won, and had been followed by an engagement in Brittany which had tried them all sorely. But he was freed from warmaking for a space and had thought to complete the business that he felt somehow lay within his purview, the final joining of his erstwhile ward to his erstwhile charge. But it rather appeared as if John of Gaunt’s daughter held some grievance against him. He followed them into the hall, where Lady Elinor claimed his attention.

  Edmund stood to one side with Magdalen, allowing his goblet to be filled and refilled. An awkward silence lay between them. He was angry with himself for neglecting to greet her in correct manner. Of course, he should have kissed her properly. She was his wife, not some lady to whom it was necessary to pay court. He did not need Guy de Gervais to demonstrate how he should have conducted himself. He had been in a ferment of excitement on the journey here, an immoderate excitement at the prospect of possessing his wife at long last, a possession that would be his final step into the true world of men, for one did not count whores. That agitation now mingled with a seething annoyance at all and sundry, an annoyance he was attempting to drown in Lord Bellair’s wine.

  Suddenly, he handed his wine cup to a hovering page and spoke to Lady Elinor, his tone sadly unceremonious as wine loosened his tongue and gave voice both to his annoyance and his passionate eagerness. “Your pardon, my lady, but I would ask leave to repair to my chamber. I am but poorly clad and would do you more honor.”

  “But of course,” Elinor said, flustered. “I will have you shown—”

  “My wife will attend me,” he declared, two spots of color burning on his cheeks. “It is customary for a wife to attend her husband in such case.”

  Magdalen paled, then as swiftly reddened as she felt the eyes of all upon them.

  Guy de Gervais turned away to the fire, bending to stroke a brindle hound thrusting its massive head against his knee. Edmund could have behaved with more delicacy, but then he was still young for all that he had conducted himself in France with the courage and strength to match any man’s. It was not strange that he should now be anxious, desirous also, and therefore tactless, about the business that had brought them hither. They were best left alone to sort themselves out, so he remained stroking the hound, gazing pensively into the fire, until Magdalen with a stiff curtsy of agreement left the hall with her husband.

  Edmund’s squire moved to follow them, but his lord gestured with an abrupt irritability, expressive more of nervousness than annoyance, and the lad fell back at the foot of the stairs.

  Magdalen preceded her husband up the stairs to the third-floor guest quarters. Lord de Gervais, as befitted his greater age and rank, was allotted the foremost guest chamber, and she passed the massive oak door at the head of the stairs, moving instead to a corner chamber at the rear of the passage.

  “My lord.” Opening the door, she stepped aside to allow him to enter ahead of her. “I trust you will find all is to your liking.”

  “Close the door,” he said, his voice suddenly thick.

  Magdalen did so, her heart thumping against her rib cage, and stepped over to a small table by the hearth. “May I pour you wine?”

  “My thanks.” He took the hanap, drank, and held the cup to her lips. “Will you not drink with me?”

  For form’s sake, Magdalen wet her lips with the wine. Then she turned aside to pour water from the pitcher into the bowl of beaten copper. “You will wish to wash, my lord.” Her voice was low, expressionless, disguising the tumultous pulse of nervous anticipation.

  He tossed his beaver hat onto the window seat and pulled off his surcote. “Help me with my mailshirt.”

  Inexperienced though they were in the ways of married couples, they both knew what each was to expect of the other. Magdalen knew well what her duties were in this instance. Her lord’s body was hers to care for after his exertions spent in her defense, or in providing for her needs and those of his household. She helped him with the chainmail, with the quilted leather tunic, with the linen shirt, with the boots and hose. She wrung out a soft cloth in the warm water and hesitated. She should sponge his body herself, but somehow she could not. She held out the cloth. Edmund also hesitated, then he took it from her and rubbed himself down. She passed him the towel. They were tongue-tied while they performed these rituals that neither had performed before.

  Magdalen was not unaccustomed to the sight of a naked man. The garrison soldiers often enough stripped under the summer sun to bathe in the river beyond the postern gate, or threw buckets of water at each other from the well in the garrison court. Her viewings of these uninhibited activities had of course been clandestine. The garrison had always been absolutely forbidden to her, but that had not prevented a bored and lonely child from creeping where she should not. At Hampton, the simpleton Jack had frequently been found skipping, naked as a shorn lamb, in the village, and no one had taken the least notice. But the intimacy of Edmund’s naked body in this small, secluded chamber shocked her into silence, and she tried to avoid looking at him even as she attended him. But it was impossible not to notice the shape and texture of him, impossible to be unaware of the youthful suppleness, the firm swell of muscle in arms and thighs.

  Since their marriage, Edmund had lived the life of a warrior. He had slept in ditches and hedgerows, in castles and abbeys; on one occasion, exhaustion had overtaken him in a doorway of a sacked town and he had slept deeply amid plundering troops, fired buildings, screams of the ravished and wounded. He had seen men bludgeoned and hacked to death on the battlefield; he had bludgeoned and hacked to death in his turn. He had fought hand to hand with nothing but a dagger, had known the headiness of bloodlust and the incandescent glory of victory. He had witnessed torture, gratuitous slaughter, dreadful injuries, unjust executions, and he accepted them as necessary in the business of war, a business that he now knew would be his for as long as God preserved him.

  He had had many women in that time, whores for the most part … except for one. But he tried not to think back on that deed. He had confessed and done penance and was shriven. The memory should trouble him no more. He knew nothing of virgins and nothing of ladies, and his nakedness in the presence of this delicate, willowy, utterly silent girl both stirred and disconcerted him. Her mute attentions thrilled him, and he knew it was because she was his wife. Wives were not whores, and the submission they made to their lords was of a very different order from that made for coin or kind.

  She turned from him when he had finished washing, folding the towel carefully, paying most deliberate attention to the creases, smoothing the damp material repeatedly, hesitating to replace it on the chest and thus indicate that her task was completed.<
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  “Magdalen!”

  The voice at her back was low but emphatic, the hand on her shoulder hard as he turned her to face him. She read the passionate message in his eyes, blue like those of his uncle, and she quivered like a kitten taken too soon from its dam. She was overwhelmed with terror at the potential power of such passion, at the contemplation of the force in the warrior’s body, at the sense of her own frailty in the face of such superior strength. She thought of the way Guy de Gervais had looked at his lady, the softness of his speech, the tenderness of his touch and kiss. She did not know—how could she?—of the years of passion Gwendoline and her lord had shared, of the vigor of their healthful, youthful couplings, of the many times Guy de Gervais had poured forth his lust and need upon the delicate body of his wife, and she had accepted it in love and as love’s gift. Magdalen knew none of these things, only the need for gentleness and her fear of an unleashed power in an unknown man.

  Edmund pulled her against him, one hand circling her waist, flattening against her buttocks, his other hand pushing up her chin as his mouth came down upon hers. She could taste the wine on his plundering tongue; clamped to his body, her breasts were painfully crushed. A great lassitude swamped her with the knowledge that she neither could nor should do anything to alter the course of the next minutes. It happened to all women at some point, unless they took the veil or, like Elinor, were permitted to settle for spinsterhood as the pensioner of a male relative.