The Seasons Series; Five Books for the Price of Three

by Domning, Denise

  The wind opened Leatrice's cloak as she started across the tiny courtyard, molding her maroon and gray gowns to the bulge Katel's babe made in her belly. Katel's brows rose in surprise then ebbed into an expression of bland disinterest. "Oh, but I thought you more careful than this," he said to her. "Whose child is that you bear?"

  "Master," Leatrice cried out in hopeless protest, "you know the child is yours."

  "Now Leatrice, do not add lying to the list of your sins," he replied in what was an almost gentle warning. "I daresay there've been more than a few who've tasted of you. Indeed, it appears you've shown a decided lack of virtue. Your immoral behavior now requires I dismiss you from my employ. Begone with you."

  Katel did not even trouble himself to the pretense of outrage. In a world that believed only the words of men, a breeding and unmarried woman was especially suspect. He was well shielded from any accusation Leatrice might make.

  The maid paled until her eyes were great, dark circles in her face. She dropped to her knees in the muck before her former lover and bowed her head. "I beg your pardon, master. You are right to chide me for trying to shift my sin onto your innocent shoulders. Can you forgive me?" she begged, her voice sweet and feminine.

  Pleasure tinged Katel's cheeks a deeper pink. Johanna's eyes narrowed in disgust. This was how he liked his women, groveling. He laid a paternal hand upon the maid's shoulder. "But of course. No harm has been done to me."

  "You are too kind, Master Katel." Leatrice made it sound as if she truly believed this. She came to her feet then retreated to the gate where she paused to look back upon her master. Anger lurked beneath her shock and hurt, the sort that comes when one trader discovers he had been cheated and seeks some avenue for revenge. "Since you have convinced me that I should speak only the truth, I have no choice but to tell all of Stanrudde that your good wife has lived as a nun for these past months." With that, Leatrice turned and hied herself beyond Katel's reach as quickly as one in her state could move. She was too bright to believe her attempt to strike at him would go unpunished.

  Johanna choked back a grateful laugh. Now, here was a new twist. Not only was Katel being betrayed by a woman, but by the one he'd just destroyed.

  Rage darted across Katel's face. "An empty threat," he snarled quietly. It wouldn't do for the neighbors to hear him shouting at a maidservant lest they suspect he wasn't the kind master he seemed.

  "Shall I fetch her back for you, master?" Theobald asked, his face dark with the desire to repay Leatrice for the damage she did his employer.

  "Nay, she may say what she pleases. It cannot hurt me." Katel looked up at Johanna, vicious pleasure filling his expression. "Soon, all the world will know my wife is an adulteress, and I will have those properties."

  Bolstered by Leatrice's unexpected support, Johanna leaned forward in her saddle. "Katel, to prove adultery, one must produce both a paramour and witnesses," she snapped in scorn. "I defy you to do so."

  The confidence that bloomed in Katel's eyes sent a stake of fear through her heart. "I can do both. When I tell the world you came not virgin to my bed, they'll believe you capable of repeating the same sin. As for who laid with you, who else would I name but the same man who deflowered you those many years ago. Only lust for you could have brought Robert the Bastard back to Stanrudde."

  Shock stole Johanna's breath from her. Rob was here? Although it was sixteen years since she'd last seen him, her mind retrieved his image as if they'd parted only yesterday.

  He'd been but seventeen then, not even fully bearded. Still, her fingers remembered the rough softness of the skin on his jaw. His dark brown hair was thick and heavy. When she toyed with it, she could make it curl along the raw-boned outline of his cheeks. His nose was narrow and just a shade too long, his fine gray eyes smiled at her from beneath gently curving brows.

  With the memory of his smile came the sweet recall of his lips pressed to hers. There had been great joy in the melding of their bodies. Pleasure's ghost was followed by a sword's thrust of pain. Johanna's skin chilled to a deathly temperature as her fingers tightened around the palfrey's reins and her heart descended into seething blackness. She had loved and trusted him, but Rob had deserted her. His cruel betrayal had trapped her in this hell that was her marriage.

  Turning her searing gaze on her husband, she hissed, "Fool! You picked the wrong man to name as my paramour, for where Robert of Blacklea is, I will never be."

  With that, she turned her horse. Making vicious use of her goad, she sent the poor, tired beast hurtling out of her home's gate, then back down Stanrudde's lanes. All that mattered was that she put as much distance as she could between herself and the man she most despised.

  Stanrudde

  Two hours past None

  The eve of Saint Agnes's Day, 1197

  "Make way; make way for Johanna, wife to Katel l’Espicer!"

  The arrogant, impatient shout brought an instant quiet in those unfortunates waiting in the abbey's market field, then rode the wind over the compound's stone perimeter wall. It blew across the courtyard's short expanse, passed the stables, and finally tumbled into the open window of that holy house's small hospitium. Standing at the window of this inner guest house, the one reserved for only the most august of the monastery's visitors, Robert of Blacklea, now Grossier of Lynn, caught his breath.

  To hear Johanna's name thus twined with Katel's was as if Katel reached across the years to once again attack him. The pain of what he'd forfeited welled up in him. Rob closed his eyes and leaned his head against the window's frame.

  The memory of Johanna and the time of their first loving immediately filled his inner vision. It had been summer, the moss on that stretch of river bank they called their own had been greener than emeralds. The day's soft mist had just turned to rain, heaven's tears streaming through the willow branches until her gowns clung to her like a second skin.

  As Johanna's image reappeared in his mind's eye, Rob drew a breath in appreciation. Mayhap only he might hail her a great beauty, still no man would deny that her face had a fine-boned elegance that would serve her long past the time when other women faded into crones. Her hair was a mix of gold and red. It curled enough that when it was loosened it flowed about her slender form in wanton waves. Each time she looked on him her eyes became all the bluer in her love for him. As if but an hour, not sixteen years, had passed since her last glance, his heart basked in the glory of her sweet affection.

  This time when Rob caught his breath, it was in despair. If his heart persisted in believing she loved him still, logic said any affection she'd ever held for him was gone, destroyed beyond redemption. He opened his eyes and stared blankly at the abbey's wall, toying idly with the massive knot of gold that was his mantle pin. Johanna, and the wrong he'd been forced to do her, haunted him. To be so stricken at the mere sound of her name did not bode well for his high-flung hope that protecting her from Katel's wrongdoing would somehow free him of this burden.

  The corners of his mouth lifted into a small and bitter smile. Free him, indeed. If he ever achieved the freedom he wasn't certain he wanted, his peers, nay, all of society, would see that it didn't last long.

  By the time an independent tradesman reached his third decade, as Rob had done three years ago, he was expected to take a wife. This was especially so when a man was as wealthy as Rob had become. Nigh on all the trading households of England had paraded their daughters before him, as had at least half of the lower nobility, with no success.

  Aye, but he wasn't foolish enough to think he could continue to refuse. Folk were already whispering about him, and rumors were bad for trade. His obsession with Johanna had to end as did his lingering belief that the two of them were well and truly wed.

  There was a touch on his elbow. Rob glanced down at William, his eleven-year-old apprentice. The lad's brows were raised in confusion as he studied his master through eyes as green as his sire's. Eye color was the only thing Will had from Arthur. All else, his slight frame, cur
ling, tawny hair, and strong will came from the boy's far more forceful dam.

  "Aye lad?" Rob asked, knowing the boy's confusion had its roots in his master's strange behavior since their arrival at Stanrudde.

  "It's the brother you wished to see. He's come at last."

  "Ah," Rob said, a spark of pleasure breaking through the odd heaviness of spirit that had plagued him since discovering Katel's theft. He turned his back on the window and his troubles, then ran supple fingers through his hair to straighten it. "By all means, admit him."

  As William crossed the room, descending the short stairway to ground level in order to assist the elderly monk up the steps, Rob glanced down at himself and freed a soft sound of annoyance. While he stood at the window pining after the unattainable, the wind had pried open his thick, marten-lined mantle, allowing the sleet to spot his carefully crafted blue tunic. Although the moisture dribbling from the ledge had missed the soft leather belt with its golden studs and his tunic's ankle-length and heavily embroidered hem, his footwear had not been so fortunate. Never meant to see the out-of-doors, these fine leather shoes were ruined. Lifting a foot, Rob wiped one shoe's worth of spots on a leg of his more mundane and concealed chausses. The rough wool of this garment that covered him hip to toe grew damp along his calf.

  A new, deep rumbling rose from those hungry folk awaiting the opening of the abbey's gate for their daily bite of bread. Startled, Rob half turned to listen. In the next instant, the sound sorted itself into the syllables of Johanna's name. Fear for her shot through him, and he turned all the way round, willing his gaze to penetrate solid stone. The chant intensified until it reached a threatening tenor.

  "Brother, we'd be honored if you used the chair," Will invited as he reentered the room with the monk. "Here, let me move it nearer to the heat."

  Wood scraped across the floor as the lad heaved the hospitium's only chair toward the room's center and their brazier. The monks heated this chamber with a brass pan filled with glowing coals, held up off the floor on a tall tripod. It was a poor substitute for a hearth. The brazier required an open window for ventilation, which meant the majority of its warmth was lost to the chill air entering the room.

  "Master Robert, Brother Herbalist is here," the lad called, making the formal announcement required of him.

  Rob ignored him, his entire being yet focused on the sound of Johanna's name pulsing from the crowd. Only three days ago a tradesman had been assaulted in his home, he and his wife beaten nigh unto death and what grain they had in store, plundered. He could not bear the thought of Johanna so injured.

  "Will they do her any harm?" Rob called over his shoulder to their visitor.

  "I doubt they'd try," the monk replied calmly, "not as long as she rides with her husband's men as her escort."

  This assurance did nothing to ease Rob's fear. This past autumn had taught him just what sort of man Katel employed. He glanced at his apprentice. "Lad, run you your fastest to the gate and watch that the goodwife's party passes unharmed. If the crowd should set upon her escort, send the porter to warn me while you rouse our men to aid her." His agent and his household guard had retreated to the abbey's stable to dice out of sight and earshot of the holy brothers.

  Excitement washed all other emotion from Will's gaze, and his hand dropped in eager anticipation to the hilt of the dagger he'd been allowed to wear on this trip. The thrill of danger was another facet of character he had from his dam, for it was nothing his father had ever owned. "Aye, Master Robert," he replied, already racing toward the room's exit.

  As Will blew out on the gust of wind that surged through the window when he threw open the door, Rob waited, taut and tense. Behind him, the monk rose and closed the door. As swiftly as it had begun, the muttering from the field died back into the low moan of hunger. Rob breathed in relief then turned to welcome the man who'd nurtured the love for trade in his heart, only to catch his breath in a wholly new fear.

  Death was closing its fist around Colin the Apothecary. The black habit of the Benedictines swallowed the former tradesman, while naught but onionskin stretched over his bones, his skull nigh on visible along his jutting cheekbones and heavy brows. Deep hollows encircled eyes as black as his hair had once been; the stuff now wreathing the monk's face and head was that pure white given only to those whose hair had once been true ebony. It was as if each one of Colin's three score years had taken a bit of him in passing, thinning and pruning him until, one day far too soon, he'd be no more.

  "Come into the light," the former tradesman commanded, his strong voice belying his delicate state, "that I might better see you."

  If Colin could speak so, he was not as frail as he appeared. Rob did as he bid, holding out his arms to give the man a better view. Years of sadness and care disappeared from the monk's thin face as he studied his dearest friend's former student. After a moment, he cocked his head to one side.

  "You are the last man I expected to emulate the Lionheart," he said, referring to both the manner in which Rob wore his hair and beard and to Walter of Stanrudde's protégé’s dislike of the French-speaking aristocrats who ruled this land.

  Rob shrugged, lowering his arms. "These days, many men choose to wear their hair almost to their shoulders and keep their beards trimmed close to their jaws. I do but keep fashion with a horde of others."

  Colin raised a chiding brow. "What? No admission that you know how well it becomes you? Aye, and with that gown of yours," he pointed to the floor-length blue tunic embossed with embroidered lozenges, each oval containing a stalk of wheat done in golden thread, "were I a lass, faith, but I'd swoon."

  As Rob laughed, the monk relaxed into the low-backed chair. The look on Colin's face intensified as if he sought the man concealed beneath the finery. It surprised Rob to find after years of being heralded as the best and brightest of his trade, he now nervously awaited this single man's judgment. At last, approving creases cut into Colin's lean cheeks.

  "Beanpole," the monk teased gently. "I think me you're even taller now than when you departed Stanrudde. You should have stopped growing a full head sooner."

  Tension drained from Rob at this ancient and familiar complaint. "I know taller men," he retorted, giving what had always been his standard response. "Have you forgotten there was once a time when you and Master Walter found my height handy? While other lads could duck and hide in a crowd to escape their master's eye, I was instantly visible."

  "So you were," Colin replied, his eyes gleaming at their old game. Jerking his head to the side in a general rightward direction, he said, "See that?"

  "What?" Rob asked in confusion, glancing between the bed, the brazier, and the stack of pallets at the far wall that had been provided for his servants.

  "The bed, you great twit," Colin said in fond irritation.

  Rob looked. It was a nice enough piece, with a mattress long enough for him to sleep comfortably upon it. At each corner of the mattress poles, onto which a spiraling line had been carved and painted a pretty green, thrust upward to support a wooden roof over the bed. A second set of horizontal poles supported curtains of thick, warm wool dyed a rich red color. He shrugged. "Aye, what of it?"

  Colin grinned. "It's our finest piece, usually reserved for the bishop's visit. You have no idea the agitation your stay has caused our esteemed abbot. I'll take that as a gauge of your success in the business of selling koren, guessing you've done right well for yourself."

  Pleasure and humility warred within Rob. "What I've done was built upon the generosity of others, yours, Master Walter's, and Master Wymund's. Moreover, I had help at the onset. Not only was there Master Walter's bequest, but Master Wymund made Arthur and me his heirs when his second wife also left him childless."

  "He made Arthur his heir as well?" The words leapt from Colin's mouth before he could restrain them. Rob smiled as he watched a man given to blunt speech seek the facade of polite disinterest that better society demanded of its members.

  "Of course, what I mean
to say is," the monk tried again, his brow drawing down in frustration, “that Wymund stated such an intention before accepting you and Arthur as his apprentices. However, I must admit I never expected, bah!"

  Colin's frustration vanished in the face of a curiosity that could not be denied. "Truly? His heir? Then, does Arthur remain with you in your trade? I never judged him the owner of the mental agility or social grace necessary for the level of trade you have achieved," he said, displaying his own lack of grace and far too forthright nature.

  Rob laughed aloud, free of his cares and worries for this moment. "How could I ever have forgotten your penchant for blunt speech?"

  "I have no idea," the former apothecary retorted with a healthy dose of scorn aimed at himself. He grinned. "Walter never ceased to point out how my refusal to play pretty games with words kept me trapped as his employee, working at street-level trade. It's a good thing that was all I ever wanted. Now, answer my question."

  "Arthur chose not to remain with me," Rob said with a swift lift of his brows. "Instead, he sold me his portion and married himself a cordwainer's fair widow. While she crafts shoes, he waits on her. My apprentice is their first born. I am godfather to two others."

  "That lad is Arthur's get," Colin cried, now even more astonished. "Frankly, I always wondered if he had energy enough to set his seed into a woman's womb. Does she hold him down and force him?"

  Again, Rob laughed. "Ach, but I have missed you, Master Colin." The title slipped from his tongue without thought, born as it was of long habit.

  "Brother Colin," the churchman corrected without rancor.

  Rob shook his head. "I fear I've known you too long as one to remember you are now the other."

  Colin only waved him toward the bed. "Come and sit near me that I need not crane my neck so to see you."