Desire Lines

by Elizabeth Kingston

  She finished peeling the turnip in quick, efficient strokes, sliced and dropped it into the pot. She gave it a stir as the quiet settled over them again.

  He watched her over many long minutes as the light waned, as the forest sounds around them changed from day to night. She had small hands, not rough or calloused like the servants he had known in Lancaster’s household. She salvaged the turnip peels and washed them, storing them away in a jar of brine so that even the meanest scraps would not be wasted. A serving girl. Widowed of a stable boy.

  Blessed are the meek, Brother Clement would have said. He was always urging Gryff to look on others with compassion, to see the divine in the ordinary. Five years spent hidden in the wilds with monks, and still he struggled with humility. Or maybe it was just her – it was that he wanted to look at her only with desire and not compassion, and thus compounded his sins.

  “Never could I speak of it as you do.” He was sure of that. He stared hard at the last bit of sunlight that sifted through the trees and imagined his father, alive, hearing what had happened to his least favored son. “Never.”

  The sound of her spooning the stew into a bowl did not rouse the same overwrought hunger as in the past. A week of eating every day had calmed his desperate appetite. She had seen to that, so determined to care for him. Now she rose from her place beside the fire and took the few steps to reach him.

  “I do not say you must tell it as I do, not even to your confessor. Only that you must not look away from it.” She handed the portion of stew to him, the rich smell rising up from the bowl. “It’s plain to see you were born to finer folk, and lived in fine estate once. But you are in the muck now, if you’ll pardon me saying it, and none down here will shame you for being powerless. It’s only what we all are.”

  She went back to her place by the fire and set about eating her supper.

  He heard her words echoing in his ears and thought of his father and brothers, and of the way their lives had likely ended. He thought of his people, of what might have happened in Aderinyth since the defeat of Wales five years ago. The fear and the sorrow of it rose in a lump to his throat.

  This time, for the first time, he did not push the thought away. He let it sit in his mind until the visions were too terrible to bear, and then he turned his attention to his supper as best he could.

  Chapter Six

  Nan paused before the little house, and leaned forward until her forehead touched the doorpost. She needed a moment to gather herself. Just a moment. She could feel him behind her, heat all along her back, like he was fire and not flesh. He stood well away, but she could feel him.

  The Welshman distracted her. So much so that she could not think of him by his name. Him. He. The Welshman. She had tied his life to hers by feeding him, traveling with him. She bound them further by giving him her story. It felt right, all of it. But it did not feel right to call him by his name. Not when her skin would not forget the brush of his hand.

  It did not matter. What was behind her mattered less than what was before her, waiting beyond this door. She put a hand to the rough wood, trying to forget the Welshman, trying to prepare herself for this long awaited moment. The village priest had directed her here, sniffing in disapproval despite the paper that bore the seal of Morency. Nan had handed it to him, hearing Lady Gwenllian’s voice in her memory, reading it out to her before it was sealed so she would know what it said.

  Take her to her Aunt Mary, it said. And that was the power of a great name like Morency, that though the priest looked at her like she was naught but a whore who traveled alone with a man she did not call husband, still he did as the paper told him.

  The Welshman did not like the contempt in the priest, but he had not shown anything more than displeasure. She was waiting every minute for his anger to burst forth. It would. It was the only thing missing. For days she had expected it, tensed at each spark of temper that appeared and then vanished, amazed at his lack of rage. Her own fury still pressed under her breast, dulled with time but always beating. It is a rare anger in you, Nan, her lady had said, and it was true. But that was years ago and she had since learned how to pour the hot anger into steel, to hone the edge of it and confine its damage to the path her blade traveled.

  She could see no such fury in him yet. When the village priest had sneered at them, the Welshman only stood taller and spoke haughtily. Like one who had imitated it his whole life, he summoned the arrogance of the highborn and wielded it easily, until the priest was scraping and scurrying to placate him.

  The Welshman had served a lord, or was born to one, she was sure of it. A bastard son, perhaps, but more likely a master falconer to a great lord – they were among the highest members of any household, that would account for his airs. But she did not care to know, and pushed the thought away. She was always pushing away the thought of him. Even now when what she searched for waited just inside this door, her thoughts were on him. How well he looked now that the edge of starvation was gone from his face, the soft and longing way he spoke of his home in Wales, the smiles he gave to Fuss, the searching looks he gave to her – it all crowded her mind, and she pushed it away.

  Mary. Mary was inside, with answers that would break her heart. She was ready to hear them. She would never be ready.

  At her back there was the heat of his lust. Within it, she felt the pull of his fascination with her. But over it all, the buffer to these potent forces, was his infinite patience.

  That was the one thought of him she did not push away now: his face as he waited for the falcon while it moved through the sky, diving and missing over and over again. How he stood serene and untroubled, like time had no meaning, calmly waiting for the moment to arrive.

  She gathered that calm to herself, willed it to seep beneath her skin and to her bones, and raised her hand to the door.

  Gryff did not know if he was meant to follow. He had felt the tension gathering in her all morning, and had bitten his tongue against asking why today was different. She had taken extra time to clean herself, put on fresh linen and her finer gown, and emerged with her hair carefully coiled into neat braids at the sides of her head, crowned with a crisp white linen fillet. Her forearms held no weapons now, the split in the sleeves tied closed. When she led them into the town and headed for the church, he thought she meant to attend mass.

  Instead they stood before a house so humble it was little more than a hut. The place was called Wragby and, despite the priest’s fulsome description of its weekly market, it was no more impressive than this tiny home at its far edge. Nan stood before the door, so still for so long that he was sure she had frozen to the spot. If he had been able to see the letter from Morency, he might know her business here. But he knew only that she had journeyed to meet whoever was inside, and it did not endear her to the ill-mannered priest.

  He watched her move at last, heard her call softly to ask for entry and open the door. Her mood had infected him – his breath was held, his heart hammering as she stepped inside – and suddenly he found himself there on the threshold. Though he thought she did not want him and knew she did not need him, he could not resist following.

  She stood in the gloom of the hut, her hair reflecting what little light there was, before an old woman seated on a crude bench. The house was only a single room with a hearth at the center, the wooden beams above black with soot. The woman sat with her hands gripping a shallow bowl in her lap, work of some sort, and squinted up at Nan. Her eyes have seen better days, the priest had said.

  “Come closer,” said the old woman, setting the bowl aside and gesturing her forward. “I won’t know you if I can’t see you.”

  Nan took a deep breath and swallowed. She knelt before the woman and whispered, “Aunt Mary. I’ve found you, Aunt Mary. I’ve come to you.”

  There was a hitch in her voice on these last words, and the old woman’s face softened, crumpled. Her hands came up to hold Nan’s face.

  “Oh bless me,” she exclaimed softly. She drank
in the sight of her niece. “If it ain’t our own sweet Nan. You live.” Tears dripped down her face. “I did not dare to hope you still lived.”

  It was the sight of tears forming in Nan’s eyes that made Gryff turn away. He was not meant to see this. Now the old woman was saying that when the priest claimed he had received word from Morency that her niece searched for her, she had thought it must be a cruel trick. She wept and laughed as she said it, patting Nan’s cheek. He should wait outside, or walk all the long way down the lane until he reached the center of the town. Something, anything to avoid the pain of seeing this love overflowing, this homecoming, this joy he would never know for himself.

  But as the old woman was saying, “You’ve your mother’s beauty, you always did,” the dog began to howl. In a corner of the room it had discovered some chickens, evidently a very alarming sight that called for a great deal of noise.

  Gryff stepped past Nan and said, “Bran!” in the same moment she cried, “Fuss!” This had the advantage of confusing the dog, who immediately paused in his outcry to look at them both in turn. Before he started up again, Gryff crossed the floor and knelt down to distract him amid a cloud of feathers. At the edge of his vision he could see Nan pressing the tears from her eyes.

  “Is this your lad?” asked the old woman. “Oh aye, you’re of an age to be married now! Come let me see him.”

  She held Nan’s hand tight and beckoned Gryff to come nearer. He looked to Nan, unsure.

  “Nay, Aunt Mary, I have me no husband. We only journey together for safety on the road to Lincoln.”

  She said no more than this, whether from circumspection or her natural disinclination to speech, and dismay came into the old woman’s face. She looked as if she might begin to weep again, but for different reasons.

  “You were ever a good girl, Nan. I did my best by you, and if you have been brought so low that you must prostitute yourself then all I would hope–”

  “Nay, goodwife, never would she dishonor herself or your good name. I beg you will not slander your niece for the charity she has shown me.” He came to her so she could see him well, his words striking a jarring note even in his own ears. They spoke so plain and humble, and he did not. “So urgent was her need to find you that she would not be delayed in waiting for the safety of a larger party, yet did she take pity on me in my distress and allows me to accompany her to Lincoln. By my hope of heaven do I swear there is no dishonor in it.”

  He bent lower to be sure she could see him. She squinted up at him, the disapproval fading from her face as he spoke. Her eyes went round, and she gave a little gasp, turning to Nan.

  “Oh he speaks fine words, and I’ve been forgetting you are a favorite of the lady of Morency!” She sat up straight but lowered her eyes, suddenly meek. She patted the grimy kerchief that covered her hair, as though a worried touch could turn it into a silk veil. “You won’t be in the habit no more of humble ways, though I’ll welcome ye as best I can. The winter stores are all but gone now, but Edmer will bring a bit of cheese. And there’s always the chickens–”

  “You won’t kill a chicken for us,” Nan said firmly, looking abashed at this change in demeanor. “And may God strike me down in my arrogance if ever I think myself too good to sit at your table.” She put a hand atop Mary’s and spoke gently. “I am only Nan, Aunt Mary. And as for any good fortune I have had, it all started with you looking out for me.”

  After that she turned briskly to business, asking Mary to tell her of her life in their years apart and instructing Gryff to bring in the packs from the mule that was tied outside. She was a whirlwind. She took over the grinding of the millet in the bowl that Mary had set aside, and had the task done even before he finished bringing in the baggage. She swept feathers from the floor and cobwebs from dark corners without pausing.

  All the while Mary explained that after Nan had gone into service, she had married a widowed man and come to live here, then was widowed in turn. Now she lived with her husband’s grown son, Edmer, whom they would meet when he returned from his day of work in town. He was simple-minded, she told them, but a good boy whom she would have loved as well as her own, if ever she had had any of her own.

  When Gryff brought the hooded falcon out of the cage and set up the perch just outside the only window, he almost regretted it. He must keep Tiffin near, as her value was too great to leave unwatched, but the sight of her caused Mary to become even more deferential.

  “There’s a very fine bird,” she said, craning her neck through the window. “Not like them ordinary hawks I seen in town. This one is fit for a king, it is.”

  Fit for a king. It’s what Baudry had said, his eyes full of greed and wonder, his hands still stained with the blood of the man he had killed. He had been reaching for Gryff and stopped when he saw the falcon.

  It was not so bad, to think of that moment – to think of how he had been spared only because of the value of a bird. He could not look squarely at the moments surrounding it. Not yet. But he would do as she advised. He would try, and if she was right then perhaps for the first time in his life he would not be ruled by shame.

  He found the bag that held the woodcocks – Tiffin had brought down two this morning but there had been no time to spare for plucking them. Nan began to rise from the mending she now bent over, but he waved at her to sit back down on the bench next to her aunt, who was asking to know everything of Nan’s life. He sat just outside the door and methodically pulled feathers as he listened.

  Nan said she had worked first for a weaver’s wife, and then went to serve in a kitchen in Chester. “From there I served in other places, and now I am at Morency these four years past.” She made no mention of any of the things she had told Gryff last night, nor even that she too had been married and widowed. When asked what her duties were at Morency if not in the kitchen, she did not say she could kill a man twice her size with a flick of her wrist. She only said her duties were to attend to whatever tasks the lady of Morency required, and went on to describe her efforts to learn from that lady about healing herbs.

  He listened to them discuss the many and varied uses for swine-grass and wondered if Mary noticed that while every use she herself had for it was to treat digestion, every use Nan mentioned was to do with healing cuts and stopping bleeding. It was a strange circumstance, that he knew more about her than this woman who loved her so well.

  When he finished with the woodcocks, he brought them in and found that Nan had removed the linen fillet from her hair. She was holding it out to Mary, who protested she must wash her hands first before touching it.

  “To learn physicking from a great lady and stitching too,” she marveled as she thrust her hands into a bowl of water and scrubbed vigorously with a cloth. “My own sister’s daughter! She had fine looks but never such a fine manner as you have nor half the wit, and it’s sure you never got neither from your father, may God assoil him.”

  Nan flinched at the words, staring at her aunt’s back. She had not known her father was dead, it was clear. But just as quickly as the surprise had appeared, it was gone. She banished all feeling from that expressive face, casting a quick glance in Gryff’s direction.

  “Come, Aunt Mary, you will scrub your hands bloody and that is worse than any dirt.” She crossed to take Mary’s hands from the bowl and dried them with her own skirt, ignoring Mary’s protests that she would ruin a gown so fine. “Sit you by the window so you have light to see.”

  The old woman did just that, holding the embroidered fillet so close to her eyes that her lashes nearly brushed against it. She sighed over it again and again, admiring the intricate detail, while her niece looked torn between pride in her work and embarrassment at being praised lavishly for so small a thing.

  And so it went until the day was done. Nan cooked and cleaned as though it were her own house, so obviously comfortable here and yet made uncomfortable by her aunt’s awe of her. Gryff would have left to find lodging for himself, afraid that Mary would ask him questions
about his own life he was not prepared to answer, but both women seemed to expect him to stay. In any case, Nan kept him too busy. She bade him build a fire in the hearth and find mud to mix with straw so that he might repair a crumbled wall of the house.

  It pleased him to do the work, which he would never have expected. It was evident Mary and her home had been neglected too long, and when the boy Edmer arrived it was just as evident that his mind was too feeble to be of much help to the old woman. He had brought a bit of cheese home, as promised, but lamented that he had forgotten to bring water and would have to go back to the well to fetch it – an almost nightly occurrence, it seemed. Gryff went with him, taking the mule and bringing back enough water and fuel to last days.

  They ate the woodcocks and some porridge, a meal that Gryff thought modest but which they praised as bounteous beyond belief. When he curled on the floor in a corner to sleep, he found himself almost grateful for some of the hardships he had endured these last months. In his former life, he would have been appalled at all of this – the meager supper, the woodsmoke that stung his eyes, the hard earthen floor that served as his bed. But though he had never been inside a home so poor and squalid, he could see it now as a great blessing. It was far better, after all, than sleeping tied to a tree and wondering what villainy and brutality he would witness next.

  He had not slept more than an hour when he woke gently – not from a bad dream this time, but from the sound of their voices murmuring low. He knew he should make it obvious he was awake and could hear them. But he didn’t because, as he had told Brother Clement countless times, he was neither saint nor monk.

  “...any message must go through the priest just as yours did, asking after me,” Mary was whispering. “So I did not answer, for then he’d know about her and bring his sour face to me and Edmer to preach Hell and damnation at us every day. And I could not think you would want your lady to know, and for shame I did not say it before so fine a guest as your Welshman.”