A Love For All Seasons

by Denise Domning

  Her face was round, her hair a pale gold, but not as pale as Papa's. A fine web of wrinkles touched the corners of her eyes. Rob remembered how the brown of Mama's eyes always sparkled green when she smiled. "Come back," he whispered, the sound rasping from his dry throat. "Come back, Mama."

  Day's light grew steadily brighter, and Rob clenched the eye that wasn't already swollen shut until his mind was again full dark. The mud that caked his face began to dry and draw, and his cheek twitched in irritation. Mama's image was consumed, just as the sun ate the morning mist. Rob let his head droop in frustration toward the garden floor. No matter how hard he conjured, something always intruded, destroying his attempt.

  "Travelers!" Dickon, son to Harold the Miller, called. His voice was sharp with excitement, his words rising from just beyond this garden's enclosing wall. "Come everyone, come and see!"

  As Dickon repeated his invitation all along the pathway to the far fields where the men were haying this week, loneliness filled Rob. Two weeks ago, he would have been equally as excited over such news.

  The sound of snorting pack animals drifted to him on the breeze. Cart wheels squeaked as they turned, growing louder as they neared Blacklea's tiny green, only a few rods distant from where Rob lay. There was a brief instant of quiet, followed by a sharp crack. A man's shouted warning was drowned out by the resounding crash of the cart bed hitting the earth.

  "Rob? Where are you? You must come and see."

  Barely audible over the purr of the doves perched on the byre's rooftop, his three-year-old sister's call shredded Rob's concentration. He shut his ears to Gretta's voice, fighting back his ever-present urge to coddle and protect her. She no longer needed him. Since Mama's death, she'd dwelt with her godmother and namesake, Margretta the Platfoot.

  "Rob, where are you lad?" There was no ignoring this call. Margretta Platfoot's voice was as strong as her flat-footed gait was weak. "The bailiff's here with a spice merchant whose cart has broken its axle."

  Margretta's voice grew in volume as she crossed the wee courtyard stretching between the toft's enclosing earthen wall and Ralph AtteGreen's cottage. "Rob, are you hiding from me, boy? Come now, your sister's wanting you."

  The cottage door's leather hinges squealed in protest as that panel was thrown wide. "God damn you to hell, old woman! By what right do you trespass into my home?"

  Margretta yelped. Rob cringed. Papa's words were still running into each other, just as they had done last even. Until last week, Rob hadn't known Papa could be so dangerous.

  "Mother of God, but you frightened a year's life out of me, Ralph AtteGreen," the old woman cried out, her voice steadying as she continued. "What are you doing here when you should be haying with the other men? Why, you're drunk!"

  "I'm a free man, old woman," Papa retorted, his tone dark and thick. "I do as and when I please."

  "Where's Rob?" Margretta's voice was suddenly cautious.

  "Gone," Papa grunted. "Drove the bastard from my toft last night, I did."

  These hard, hurting words made tears fill Rob's eyes. He was no bastard. Bastards were fatherless children, the lowest of the low, conceived by fornication or adultery. Papa cursed such children, saying it was better to drown these brats than let them live in shame. Now, because of the terrible lie Mama told just before she died, Papa wished that death upon his own son.

  "Tell me you did not!" Margretta's tone was shocked. "Why, Gilly's barely cold in her grave."

  "Aye, but buried she is. If she'd wanted me to continue to pretend that dark-haired devil is mine, then she shouldn't have died." Papa's complaint was almost a sob.

  "Why, you ungrateful wretch!" Margretta shouted. "I'll see you pay for this. Rob! Rob, where are you, lad?"

  "Meddling bitch!" Papa roared. "Get out of my home!"

  Margretta shrieked. Fabric rent. Flesh impacted with flesh. "Help me, neighbors," the old woman screamed. "Help, help!" Her last word disappeared into a gag.

  "Nay, Papa, nay," Rob whispered against his father's madness. He covered his ears with his hands, then pressed his head hard against his knees and let hopelessness take him to a timeless place beyond hearing or seeing.

  "I've found the lad!"

  The call, bellowed from directly overhead, startled Rob from his dazed musing. His uninjured eye flew open. One row over the leafy beans were now crushed beneath the heavy soles of two short-topped boots. Out of these shoes grew a pair of thick legs clad in bulky red chausses and cross-gartered in dark green.

  Rob turned his head to follow the legs upward. The big man wore a rich green gown woven with golden threads beneath a fur-trimmed mantle. His golden mantle pin and the tiny brass medallions on his belt caught the sun with blinding impact. Dazed by the brightness, Rob shut his eye. When he opened it once more, the stranger was kneeling in the muck beside him.

  Never before had Rob seen a man as red as this one. Two flaming, bushy brows crested over eyes as pale a blue as the mill pond in winter. Hair the same bright red color curled in wild abandon around the big man's head, while his beard, a bare shade lighter, covered a broad jaw. What skin was exposed in all this hair was sunburnt to a painful hue, making his tawny freckles and dark moles stand out in sharp relief, while it peeled across the bridge of his great, arching nose.

  With gentle fingertips, the stranger felt at the bruises and lumps on Rob's head and shoulders. "Ach, poor lad. You're fevered. I'll wager me you laid here all the night long." Where before the foreigner's voice had been a thundering roar, it was now a muted rumbling, but there was outrage in his quiet tone.

  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 headcloths, but their hands were stained w
ith 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 among 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.