by Jane Feather
They sighted the roof of the abbey at St. Omer as the bells were ringing for vespers, but when they reached the gate-house in the enclosure walls, Guy immediately sensed something amiss. They would have been seen approaching from some distance away, and he would have expected the hospitaller to be waiting to greet them and show them to the guest hall. But the stone gate was resolutely closed, and the inset grille offered only a blind eye to the travelers. He told his page to pull the bell beside the gate, and they all listened as the echoing peals flew repeatedly within with a strange hollowness, as if those who inhabited this place were absent.
Finally, there came a sound of dragging footsteps, as if each step entailed more effort than could be easily borne. The grille slid open, and a tired, lined face looked out at them, pale eyes haunted with sorrow beneath the white wimple and black cowl.
“I can offer you little succor, friends,” the porteress said, making no attempt to open the gate.
“Why, how is this?” Guy demanded. “We ask a traveler’s rest of the good sisters of this abbey. There are women in our party—”
“And there is plague within these walls,” the sister said simply.
Guy took an involuntary step backward, a swift prayer to St. Catherine, his patron saint, rising unbidden to his lips. Since the catastrophic pandemic of forty years ago, the plague remained a recurrent scourge, and none was untouched by it. It struck down rich and poor, lord and peasant, God’s servants as often as the damned.
“May God have mercy upon you, Sister, and all within your house,” he said. The grille closed, and he turned back to his assembled company. His page regarded him with wide, frightened eyes.
“My lord, are we touched?”
Guy shook his head. “Nay, lad. We have not stepped within the gates.”
“What is it, my lord? Why are we denied entrance?” Magdalen clambered with relief from the wagon and walked somewhat stiffly toward him.
“The sisters have the plague,” he told her. “We will seek shelter in the town for this night.”
But when they reached St. Omer some ten minutes later, they found the gates closed to them, the watchmen within both fearful and threatening—fearful because of the size and warlike appearance of the group, and threatening because they had no other recourse. “There is plague abroad in the land,” they told Guy. “We admit no traveler within these walls.”
They showed sense, Guy reflected. Isolation was the only way for a community to protect itself, but it left him stranded in the countryside. Of course, he could attempt to force entrance, and with the men at his command he would probably succeed, but he was not at war with the citizens of St. Omer and had no wish to spend the night among hostile people.
Magdalen, who was now heartily sick of the wagon and extremely hungry besides, stepped down purposefully. “If you have tents, sir, why can we not make camp like the soldiers?” She gestured to the plain around them. “There is a pretty river, and firewood aplenty.”
“We may do so,” he said, “but ’tis hardly fit accommodation for the Lady de Bresse.”
“The Lady de Bresse thinks it is,” she said stoutly. “I can think of nothing pleasanter. It is such a lovely evening.”
It was a lovely evening, the air as soft as wine and rich with the fragrances of sweet basil and sage thick upon the riverbank. The cooks would have little difficulty preparing supper on the braziers they carried in the baggage train, the men would sleep beneath the stars easily enough, and they carried sufficient tents for those who would need them.
“I have always wished to,” Magdalen said, judiciously adding more weight to her side of the scale.
Guy laughed because he could not help himself, she had such a look of eager mischief about her. Then he saw the deep sensual glow in her eyes belying the mischief, saw that full, passionate mouth opened slightly in her own laughter, the little white teeth clipping her bottom lip, and desire stronger than he had ever known washed through him, leaving him breathless.
“By the Holy Rood, Magdalen,” he whispered, “what bewitchment do you work? You are indeed your mother’s daughter.”
“What of my mother?” The gray eyes widened in surprise. “What do you know of my mother?”
“That she held men in thrall,” he said, his gaze suddenly distanced. “That she drove men to distraction with the power of her beauty and the—” But here he stopped, brought suddenly back to awareness of what he was saying and to whom he spoke. And the power of her treachery, he would have said, but he could not say such a thing to this sweet-scented innocent, whose knowledge and understanding of her own powers was but still undeveloped.
No one had ever spoken to Magdalen of her mother beyond the mere mention of her name, and now a new vista opened as she saw Guy’s expression, heard his words, heard even more the sudden cessation of his words.
“I do not understand,” she said hesitantly. “Is it good that I should be like my mother?”
Guy’s eyes focused again. “We all belong to our parentage,” he said briskly. “It is only meet that we should do so. You have John of Gaunt’s mouth, his arrogance and his determination, and you have some things of your mother.”
With that, he turned from her and went to take counsel with his vassal knights as to the wisdom of making camp outside the walls of a hostile town.
Magdalen wandered down to the river, imbued with a strange seeping excitement, as if something was at last to come to fruition. Whatever it was that she shared with her mother, it was something that set Guy de Gervais aquiver, something that cut through his determined withdrawal like a dagger through wax.
Tents were pitched on the rise above the riverbank, and the air soon filled with the rich aromas of roasting venison haunch and sides of beef that formed part of their provisions from England. A long trestle table was set up outside the grouping of tents, and the company sat down on plank benches to supper as the evening star appeared in the sky. The meal was conducted with all the ceremony of high table at the de Gervais manor at Hampton, the knights served by their pages, servitors bearing laden platters of meat from the braziers to the table, minstrels playing as torches were lit, chasing the dusk away from the bright, hospitable scene.
Magdalen picked up the great dipper and ladled meat juice lavishly onto her bread trencher. She was so hungry she forgot for the moment the obligation to eat daintily and swallowed the bread almost whole before reaching with her little jeweled hip knife to hack at the roast of beef in front of her.
“I do not remember when I was last so hungry,” she confided to Guy, feeling guiltily for her handkerchief on which to wipe her greasy fingers. “I expect it was because we have had no dinner.”
“Fasting tends to have such an effect,” he observed gravely, drinking deep of the wine cup as his neighbor passed it to him. “But I am glad to see you quite restored to health.”
“Yes, and on the morrow I intend to ride,” she informed him in no uncertain terms. “The jolting in the wagon is insupportable. Besides, ’tis an unhandsome, scurvy means of journeying.”
Guy laughed. “I would not care for it myself. But if you intend to ride, you should perhaps seek your rest soon.”
“Do you think there are wolves?” Magdalen said suddenly, aware of the dark plain lurking just outside their magic circle.
“Probably. But they’ll not venture within the fires, and there’ll be watchmen posted throughout the night.”
Magdalen shivered. “I’d rather face a monk with a knife than wolves.”
He looked at her sharply. “You’ve no need to fear either, pippin.”
“But do you not think it a strange coincidence that twice someone should have attempted to harm me? That time with the brigands at Westminster, and then yesterday?”
“These are lawless times,” he said casually. “At Westminster, we were journeying late in the day, without proper escort. It was inviting trouble. That night …” He shrugged. “The whole town was in an uproar, and robbers thrive on chaos.
”
She nodded, playing with a crumb of bread. “But there is Edmund, also.”
“Edmund was alone in the forest, where it is known outlaws are supreme.”
“Yes, I suppose that is true.” She put a hand up to stifle a yawn.
“Come, I will take you to your tent where your women await you.” He stood up. “The tent is too small for all three of you, but they may sleep just outside.”
Magdalen frowned. “You do not fear they might be molested?” She looked around at the busy scene, where men-at-arms sat by the braziers, cleaning armor, eating supper, passing flagons of ale and mead. It seemed orderly enough, but what would happen when the lights went out?
“I doubt they will receive unwelcome attentions,” he said dryly, remembering the previous evening’s unlicensed sport.
Magdalen chuckled and deliberately slipped her hand into his. He stiffened for a second and made to withdraw his own hand, then he yielded the issue. It seemed such a natural gesture. But the quality of the gesture changed in the most disturbing fashion. Her little finger began tracing tiny circles against his palm. It was the most secretive, sensual movement, hinting at moist and humid places, at soft openings and knowing caresses. He looked down at her sharply and saw that her face was upturned toward his, reading in his expression the effect of her wicked game. He felt himself slipping again, pulled inexorably to that center from where she sat drawing in her line. Where had she learned such things? They were the opposite of innocence. But why should he assume innocence? She had made it very clear what she wanted of him and that she knew he wanted the same of her. Such clarity and single-mindedness of purpose were not components of innocence. Perhaps she had never been innocent. Women were, after all, put upon the earth to lead men into temptation, and, as John of Gaunt had said, Magdalen had entered the world in a moment accursed, a moment of evil. She brought double jeopardy with her.
But even as he thought these things in a harsh attempt to hold himself from the brink of that jeopardy, she chuckled again, low, sensuous, mischievous, and he knew he was already lost, that he was only playing for time. Nevertheless, he left her abruptly at her tent, with no more than a word of good night.
It was a very small tent, with room only for a single straw pallet. It was too cold to sleep naked as she was accustomed to doing, so Magdalen crawled beneath the fur coverlet in her shift and lay listening as the camp grew gradually silent. A wild dog bayed, and the melancholy sound was picked up by others. Magdalen’s skin prickled. There was something about the call, something wild, elemental, urgent, that lodged deep inside her, bringing forth some answering response that needed little enough now to emerge. Slowly a surging took over her body, a deep-rooted, passionate urgency that heated her skin despite the freshness of the night.
She knew what she wanted, and she knew the time had come, although no words of explanation or of planning formed in her head.
Drawing the fur closely about her, she crept to the tent opening. A sentry was dozing at his post, and she could hear Erin and Margery’s snores from the ground beside the tent.
Wraithlike, she slipped out, standing upright, the dark fur and her dark hair blending into the gloom. Fires flickered dimly ahead. A few torches held by watchmen offered points of light further afield, demarcating the camp circle. Horses shuffled and whickered, tethered to stakes within the fires’ protection. Otherwise, there was no disturbance of the sleeping camp.
The dragon of Gervais fluttered over his tent in the night breeze. She flitted soundlessly, dark-shrouded, across the ground, feeling the coarse grass against her bare feet dampening with the night dew. There was no one to see her pass except for a half-wakeful page who had indulged himself on green apples from an orchard they had passed and was now suffering the ill effects. But he believed the figure to be some imaginary shade produced by his griping, disordered belly and simply whispered a prayer to St. Christopher as the dim ghost slipped by.
Guy was not asleep. A lantern burned dimly in the tent. His head was full of dreams, his body alive with longings. He had believed himself essentially a continent man. He had been faithful to Gwendoline except for the occasional heated skirmish during campaigns, when spilled blood and mortal danger threw up lust’s demands like some boil on the skin and they had to be lanced quickly and cleanly, lest they fester and pollute the mind and body. Since his wife’s death, he had had only encounters of like kind, and only when his need was imperative. Since Gwendoline, he had never wanted a particular woman.
Until now. His desire for the girl was fleshly desire, the powerful, throbbing obsession of the body, but there was more. Had it been only the former, he would have sought release elsewhere, calmed the heated flesh, and forced his mind to other things. But there was something about Isolde’s daughter, some aura of danger and passion and promise that held him fast in gossamer coils. And there was something about the quicksilver nature of her, the arrogance and determination, the ready laughter, the single-minded loyalty to person or purpose, that filled him with deep delight.
He caught the scent of her, that special scent reminiscent of new-drawn milk and honey, even before he was aware of the shadow slipping into his tent. And a profound knowledge of inevitability drove all self-denying protest from him.
Dropping her fur shroud, she slipped beneath the cover beside him. “I was afeared to sleep alone, with the dogs and the wolves and the monks with knives.”
“Why did you not call your women?” He pushed up the shift, freeing it from beneath her.
“I called, but none came.” Naked, she stretched beside him.
“Madame, I believe you lie.”
“Yes,” she agreed, kissing the line of his jaw, touching the tip of her tongue into the corner of his mouth. “But what else is one to do in such an instance?”
He drew her against him, fitting her body to his. There was warmth where her skin touched his, and cool places where they were apart. He moved aside the cover, baring her shoulder to the lantern light. The creamy slope glimmered, leading his eye down to the delicate blue-veined swell of her breasts. He touched the line of her body from below her ear to her hip, feeling the tender curves, the deep indentations. His palm cupped the flare of her hip, flattened against her thigh, drew her leg across his own thighs, opening her body.
Magdalen shuddered as she unfolded to the fervid, deeply intimate caress. Her lips sought the shadowy hollow of his shoulder, her tongue dipping, savoring the salt-sweetness of his skin, her thighs slithering against the muscled hardness of his. She felt him rise against her belly and moved her hand to clasp the nudging shaft, stroking as she reached down further, exploring the heated furrows of his body as she was explored.
The glowing, impassioned, whispering lovemaking had its own integrity, separate from all past experiences and creating its own future promise. When he was within her, she felt herself encompassed within his flesh, with nothing to define the shape of her body on the pallet as distinct from the one loving her; and when, after an eternity of dissolution, he withdrew from her, she felt a great sense of loss and tears started in her eyes, her arms tightening around him as if she could bind him to her.
He understood the tears and held her secure in his embrace as he rolled onto the pallet beside her. She wept silently into his shoulder, her warm body locked against him, and he felt the great vulnerability of her frailty where before he had been only aware of the immense power of her passion that had matched his and inflamed them both.
She fell asleep with the tears still wet on her lashes, his shoulder damp beneath her cheek. And he lay listening to the joyous, passionate descant of a nightingale, a harmony that seemed to acknowledge no limits to love, no insurmountable obstacles to joy.
Chapter Six
“There is little more I can do for him, Father Abbot.” The monk rose wearily from his knees by the pallet in the small, stone-walled, stone-floored chamber off the main infirmary. “This night will see the end, if the end is to be.”
The
abbot stood looking down at the broken body on the pallet. His hand rested lightly on the crucifix on his chest in an unconscious gesture, as if seeking strength, purpose, true decision from the contact. “He is anointed and absolved. He will meet his death in grace.” Bending over the body, he touched the cross to the livid lips. “Go in peace, my son, if depart this life you must.” The breath was a mere whisper, a sigh of life, from between those lips in a face as cold and gray as putty.
The tending monk took a cup of warmed wine, aromatic with herbs, and held it to the man’s mouth. The liquid dribbled unswallowed. Brother Armand wiped the lifeless mouth, passed a cool, lavender-soaked cloth over the broad forehead where a great purple swelling throbbed at the temple.
“Send for me if he should stir. It is hard for a man to die unnamed and among strangers.” The abbot left the room, and Brother Armand sat on the stool beside the bed to keep the night’s vigil. It was near impossible to believe that a man could live after such hurts, and if he should die, it would be impossible to know which of his dreadful injuries had caused his death. The gash on his head was deep enough to have fractured the skull. One alone of the many stab wounds and sword cuts would have been sufficient to drain the lifeblood from him. Yet, somehow, the faint stirring of breath continued, although the cleansed, bandaged, splinted body beneath the covers remained motionless.
Dawn broke, and the man still lived. Brother Armand touched his mouth again with the cup of wine, and this time there was the faintest movement in his throat, an effort to swallow. The eyelids flickered, the faintest tremor, and the apothecary waited for the first recognition of pain. It would be a remote recognition to begin with, but it would indicate that life still pulsed deep within the shattered frame. The mouth quivered, the nostrils flared almost imperceptibly, but it was enough to tell the watching apothecary of the return of sensation. A tension passed across the hollowed, shadowed, deathly pallor of the man’s face, the tension of alarm as the pain now bit deep.
