The Seasons Series; Five Books for the Price of Three

by Domning, Denise

  Before Rob could think to resist, he was lifted from the beans and cradled against the man's burly chest. The fabric beneath Rob's head was soft. He breathed deeply. The stranger's tunic carried with it a tangy-sweet scent he didn't recognize.

  As his tall rescuer carried him from the garden and around the byre's far end, Rob could see over the toft's low, enclosing earthen wall to the green beyond it. A small, two-wheeled cart lay at the near side of that open expanse. Its axle had split in the middle, the splintered ends now resting on the ground. Guarding it and the string of pack animals laden with baskets that surrounded it was a group of men dressed in the same padded cloth vests and leather caps that Blacklea Manor's guards wore.

  A flicker of interest rose within Rob at this exotic sight then died against his greater need to lie beneath his own blanket within familiar walls. He waited for the man to turn right toward the neat cottage that had been home for all his life. Instead, the big man continued straight on, walking toward the gap in the toft's wall.

  Panic choked Rob. As sure as he breathed, if he stepped one toe beyond the toft's wall, all hope of conjuring Mama back to life would be lost. With a hoarse croak, he struggled to lift himself upright in the man's arms. His attempt only made spots and stars swim before his eyes, even in the darkness behind his swollen eyelid. By the time his senses steadied, he and the man were in the green.

  Too late! Rob sagged as his fragile hold on the world he knew shattered. Mama was beyond his reach for all time. Now, nothing would ever be the same.

  The stranger stopped beside his cart. "Aleric, bring me your skin," the big man called.

  "Aye, Master Walter."

  One of the men, long and lean, stepped forward with the water container. He set the skin's spout against Rob's lips. At the touch of cool liquid against his skin, Rob's mouth opened on its own. Water dribbled down his dry throat. Swallowing was so painful it was a moment before he realized this was water and something more. The strange taste of it made him turn his head aside before his thirst was quenched.

  At his refusal, Master Walter shifted Rob in his arms and continued on toward the green's center. Rob turned his head far enough to see who was gathered here. The men had all come down from the fields. Their sweat-streaked chests were bare, the shirts and tunics tied around their waists wearing a coat of hayseed. The women were far neater in their bright gowns and homespun head cloths, but their hands were stained with the fruits of their kitchens. In rote habit, Rob counted them, his brain tallying and separating as he always did: two and forty men and boys, seven and fifty lasses and women. Of them, four and seventy were married, the remainder being either widowed or yet too young to wed.

  Papa, wearing only his shirt and chausses, hung between Wilfred, Blacklea's bailiff, and Peter the Archer, sergeant of the manor's few protectors. The sun made Papa's pallid hair gleam almost white. His new madness, along with too much ale, made his jaw slack and kept his brown eyes closed halfway.

  As the merchant moved into the crowd, old Margretta came to walk beside him. Pale-haired Gretta was cradled in her godmother's arms, sobbing softly against Margretta's shoulder. The old woman's face bore an angry red mark, and her sleeve was tom from her gown.

  "You poor creature," Margretta crooned as she squinted shortsightedly down at Rob.

  Master Walter stopped before Wilfred, the long-faced Norman who was Blacklea's master in lieu of its lord. "Bailiff, look upon what this man has done. The lad hangs onto life by his fingernails alone."

  Wilfred raised a dark and unconcerned brow. "While his mistreatment is unfortunate, Master Walter, the boy yet lives. There's no law against a man beating his son."

  "I am not his father!" Papa shouted. "His mother confessed it to me with her dying breath."

  Rob shrank into the merchant's arms. Papa shouldn't speak this lie aloud before the entire village. Didn't he care that he hurt Mama by naming her a Norman's whore?

  The merchant loosed a harsh laugh. "Convicted by his own words. Now, you've not only assaulted the goodwife here, but another man's child as well. And, that is against the law."

  "Rob's your son and no other's," the bailiff sniffed, ignoring Master Walter's charge. "Gilemota raved in her last days, distraught by her babe's death and fevered from the delivery. Any claim she made against Lord Graistan was born of that delirium."

  "How can you say so when that bastard," Papa said, again throwing the awful charge at his son as he jerked his head in Rob's direction, "was born just seven months after Gilly and I were wed? Jesus God, look at him as I have had to all these years. He's his sire's image with that dark thatch and those gray eyes. You dare not call me liar, not when every man here knows Gilly laid with Lord Henry for the two months before she and I were joined."

  "Too late, Ralph," Dickon's sire, Harold the Miller, shouted. "You cannot cry misuse now, not when you've raised the lad for ten years as your own without complaint. You knew full well what Gilly had done prior to your joining. If you were so concerned over what grew in her womb, you should have waited a few months before you wed her." His opinion was supported by a general, positive muttering among the crowd.

  "Aye, we all remember how eager he was to wed Gilemota," Margretta said, raising her powerful voice. "He wanted to make certain no other man received the dowry her lord had settled on her in trade for what she'd given him."

  Margretta scanned the crowd, finding the support she sought in their broad faces then turned her gaze back on Papa. "Ralph AtteGreen, Gilly's bedplay made you both a free man and a landowner when she wed you. I say the price you pay for your freedom is to raise her child, despite his parentage."

  "The priest placed no cloak over us at our wedding," Papa roared. "I did not accept him." He threw himself at Margretta, despite the bailiff and the bowman.

  As Papa's captors struggled to subdue him once again, Blacklea's folk all raised their voices. Neighbor argued with neighbor over how Papa had changed and what should now be done with Gilemota's son. Tears pricked at Rob's eyelids. No one wanted him now that they all thought him a bastard.

  "Have you no shame?" Master Walter's deep voice crashed through their arguments. "Would you send a child back to a man who has done such harm? I say if his father wants him no more, let his godparents see to his welfare as is only right."

  "He has none," Margretta replied with a sorry shake of her head. "His godfathers died years ago, and fire took his godmother and all her family this past winter, God rest their souls. There's no one else."

  Rob turned his face into Master Walter's chest. He was alone, alone, alone.

  The merchant's arms around him tightened. Startled, Rob looked up at him. Master Walter's expression was grim as he stared at Blacklea's folk.

  "If none of you will protect him, I will, charging every one of you to bend your knees before your priest for you sorely lack Christian charity." The merchant looked down at the child in his arms. "Why, this very morn I caught myself thinking on how I needed me a new scullery lad."

  Despite the kindness that dwelt in Master Walter's pale blue eyes, terror made Rob shrink within himself. The merchant was a stranger who lived in a place that was not Blacklea. To leave Papa, Gretta, his home, and everything familiar would be worse than dying.

  "Master Walter, what are you saying?" The complaint, made in a fine tenor voice, rose from the broken cart at the crowd's far edge.

  Blacklea's folk parted to let a youth of barely more than a score of summers pass. Although the green gown beneath his brown mantle was fine, his pin was plain, and he wore no jewels upon his fingers. As short as Papa, the young man had golden hair and clear skin. A slender nose set high above a soft mouth lent him an almost girlish beauty. Just now, an expression of pained concern darkened his high brow.

  "Master, you can do these backward folk no favor by taking on what should be their burden," the youth began as he stopped before the spice merchant. "Come, let us retire to the manor house as the bailiff has invited whilst they decide the issue amon
g themselves." His gaze dropped to Rob. Apprehension flashed through his luminous brown eyes as his nose wrinkled. "Jesu, but he stinks. He's ruined your gown with his filth."

  "Better a ruined gown than a broken boy, Katel," Master Walter replied in gentle chastisement.

  This Katel stepped closer to lay a cajoling hand on the big man's arm. "Master," he said in a whisper, "I know you mean well, but there are times when you blind yourself to the obvious. Can you not see how these scheming folk plot against the weight of your purse? I say this whole matter was arranged for your benefit so they might foist this bit of offal onto you."

  "Katel," Master Walter cried softly, his voice filled with surprise, "what eats at you this morn that makes you callous? To what corner of the world has your compassion flown?"

  "But Master," this Katel persisted, his voice touched with fear, "he's a bastard. You should not sully your prominence and prestige by involving yourself with one so unworthy of your attention."

  Master Walter studied the youth for a quiet moment, compassion touching his blue gaze. "Katel, you mistake me for your sire. This boy is nothing to me. You, on the other hand, will someday be the master spicer and I but your father-by-marriage."

  Despite his master's reassuring words, the youth shot a worried glance at Rob, as if he still feared being usurped in his master's affection. He bowed his head. "I beg pardon for misjudging you, Master Walter."

  "Given," the spice merchant said easily as Katel retreated to a spot beyond Rob's view.

  Master Walter scanned Blacklea's folk. "Be you all my witnesses in this." To Papa, he said, "I'll give you ten pence for the lad, purchasing him as my servant. When he has earned back that sum by his efforts on my behalf, I will free him to do as he pleases in the world."

  "He's yours on the condition he not call himself my son," Papa retorted.

  A tiny whimper escaped Rob. He wasn't a bastard. Papa was his father, just as Dickon was Harold's son. This was too much to bear. Every muscle loosened, and he hung in the merchant's arms, too heartsore to protest.

  "Rest assured that I will never name this lad your son," Master Walter replied, his words iron hard. With that, the merchant turned and strode back to his cart.

  "Aleric, you'll transport our lad home. Use my horse as he's the stronger. We'll surely be back on the road by the morrow's dawn, so you should catch us there the day after." He glanced sourly at the broken wain. "We'd better be on the road by the morrow, else this is the last time I do favors for monks."

  "I doubt that, Master," Aleric said with a quiet smile. As he slung the waterskin's strap over his shoulder, another man led forward a great white steed, its trappings as magnificent as its rider's attire.

  When Aleric had mounted, Master Walter lifted Rob into his man's arms. Rob moaned as he was jostled and shoved into the saddle before Master Walter's servant. His head fell back against the man's chest. Aleric's vest reeked of sweat and, despite its padding, had not even a hint of softness to it.

  "I have me an idea," Master Walter said, still standing at his man's knee. "When you arrive home, tell my daughter I have decided to put her promises and pleadings to the test."

  "He's giving way," someone near the group's rear muttered, and laughter rippled over the spice merchant's men.

  "I am not," the merchant retorted, his voice rising slightly in self-defense. "Aleric, tell my daughter that the healing of this lad is to be her first chore as mistress of my house. If she succeeds in the task, I'll consider allowing her to forgo learning her letters to do as she claims the other lasses do and begin learning household management."

  "Aye, Master," Aleric said, setting heels to the horse.

  With a call of Fare-you-well the man turned his borrowed mount and set it to trotting away from Blacklea's green. The jolting gait made stars again appear before Rob's vision. With naught but despair left in him he let the blackness swallow him. His heart was broken, and he would die for certain now.

  Stanrudde

  Late May, 1173

  Seated on a stool at the center of the spice merchant's new hall, Walter of Stanrudde's only child looked down at the portable desk in her lap. From beneath the concealment of Johanna's blue skirts, a tiny paw emerged. New claws, sharp as pins, caught at her stockinged ankle. Choking back a giggle, Johanna stared at the parchment spread atop the desk's sloping surface.

  It was her third lesson in reading. This time she tried, she truly did; she stared at that sheet until her eyes crossed. The parchment was worn, its edges smudged and finger-marked by the countless students who had used it before her. Where her tutor, Brother Mathias, swore there were words, she found nothing save swirling ink stains.

  Frustration weighed heavily on Johanna's heart. It wasn't the lessons she minded so much, it was Brother Mathias; he liked teaching her no more than she liked being taught by him. But someday she would marry Katel, Papa's oldest apprentice, and Katel wished her to learn to read and keep the accounts.

  Johanna reminded herself she was fortunate to be betrothed to one as handsome as Katel, or so said the gaggle of lasses who labored in Papa's house and the apothecary shop. She should be trying to please him, since it was Katel who'd given her her new kitten; Puss was to serve as a reminder of their betrothal while Katel and Papa were traveling.

  They'd be gone all summer, and it would be years and years before she and Katel could marry. Vindicated in her reluctance to complete this lesson, Johanna set to teasing the kitten hiding beneath her stool. This time, the youngling tom sank its claws past her stocking and into her skin. A squeak of pain slipped out from between her clamped lips.

  Instantly, Johanna bowed her head over the parchment and formed deep creases on her brow. Only when she wore this expression did Brother Mathias believe she was trying. The silence in the room continued uninterrupted. When Johanna could bear it no longer, she peered up from her pose.

  Hands cupped behind his back, Brother Mathias stood before the wide, arched opening in this chamber's western wall. The white surplice that lay atop his black habit gleamed in the late afternoon light. Beneath dark hair gone rusty with age, her tutor's face was heavy in the cheeks and weak at the chin. The monk's brown eyes, honed over years of tutoring the scion of Stanrudde's merchant class, narrowed in suspicion and reproach.

  "Lower your gaze," he commanded, no affection in his tone.

  Dutifully, Johanna turned her gaze back to the angled wooden box in her lap. Brother Mathias detested her habit of staring directly at him. He said such behavior made her lewd. Johanna wrinkled her nose in contempt. Even she knew eight was too young for that. Lewdness was something done by wild apprentices and maids with breasts.

  "Are you finished?" Mathias bit out.

  "I am still pondering this word," she answered, stabbing a finger toward the center of the skin.

  "Hurry it. Vespers will soon be upon us." Once again, he put his back to her.

  Good. It shouldn't be too hard to stall until Mathias had to leave for the priory. She held her meek pose for another moment then raised her head to look at the whitewashed wall across from her. Instead of wood, Papa's new house was made up of walls of rounded stones. Although the inner wall wore a coat of plaster, the plasterer had let the texture of the stones show through. Thus, what should have been a flat surface became a swirling maze to tease her eye.

  Johanna followed one looping avenue over and around the stones until her gaze touched on the wooden dividing wall that cleaved this long room into two, hall and bedchamber. In the far corner stood three chests, one painted in shades of green, one brown detailed with blue, the third a rusty color bound with brass. The rusty-colored one held their linens, while the others contained what had been her mother's wealth in serving platters, their aquamanile, the ewers, and eating utensils. They were her dowry and would stay so, even if Papa married again and got himself a son.

  She glanced impatiently back to the window and the monk. Brother Mathias hadn't moved. How much longer?

  Just then, th
e kitten hiding beneath her skirts laid his head upon his mistress's foot and purred; Johanna's toes thrummed with his pleasure. The corners of her mouth quirked upward at the sensation. Unable to resist, she tilted her head to one side until the tail of one golden-red braid brushed the floor. Puss's purring stopped. Back and forth her plait's end swept, just outside the edge of her hems. A ball of gray fur erupted from beneath her skirt. The kitten sank his claws into the leather thong that bound her hair, flipped himself onto his back, and kicked joyously at this new toy. Johanna snickered as the kitten turned in frantic play, leaping, pouncing, and chasing at the thick layer of rushes that covered the floor around him.

  "What is this?" Mathias roared. He leapt for the kitten, foot raised to smash the wee creature's head. "Begone, you servant of Satan!"

  "Nay!" Johanna shrieked, launching herself off the stool. The desk smashed on the floor; the stool clattered onto its side. She caught the monk by his cord belt and shoved at him. "Katel gave him to me! You leave him alone!"

  Startled by her attack, Mathias stumbled, missing his prey. All his fur on end, Puss hissed, the sound bigger than he. Still spitting, he fled the hall for the bedchamber.

  The monk turned on Johanna, his eyes wild at such unbelievable boldness. "Foul bitch, not only do you dare to reprimand your better, you shoved me!" His words were a raging breath.

  Johanna took a backward step. Mathias grabbed her arm and raised his hand. Concern turned into shock. It had never occurred to her the monk would strike her. Papa never hit her, no matter how angry she made him

  "Helewise!" she shrieked in fear.

  The housekeeper must have been waiting just inside Papa's bedchamber door, for she swept into the room almost before Johanna's call left her mouth. Helewise's green overgown and brown undergown clung to her ample curves. Held to her head by a thin metal circlet, a fragile veil draped the housekeeper's unremarkable face, the fashionable loop of fabric beneath her jaw serving to support a second set of chins. As she stopped beside her charge, she lowered her head as did every demure female when facing a man, especially a churchman. But behind Johanna's back where the monk couldn't see, the housekeeper caught a fistful of her charge's gown.