Almost Innocent

by Jane Feather

  Magdalen listened and could hear no sounds from within. She lifted the oiled latch gently, pushed the door open a fraction. The room was empty as she had expected. Guy’s pages and squire were attending him in the hall, and he would command only one of them to light him to bed when he chose to come. She slid into the room, drawing the door closed behind her. It fitted snugly against the wall. She tossed her taper into the fire and drew the rich velvet curtains around the great feather bed. Then she slipped into the dark cave, discarded her robe, and huddled beneath the heavy covers, waiting.

  She must have slept for a while, because the sound of voices from beyond the bedcurtains startled her, yet she had heard no one come into the room. She lay still, listening. Guy was talking to young Stefan as the page helped him out of his clothes and into his long robe. The conversation dealt with affairs in the great hall and contained some pithy advice for the lad on the subject of temperance. Magdalen sat up and hugged her knees.

  When Stefan went to draw back the bedcurtains, Guy shook his head. “No, lad, leave them. Get you to bed now.” The significance of the enclosed bed had not escaped him and as the door closed on the sleepy page, he sat down by the fire to await developments.

  Magdalen’s head appeared from between the curtains. “I give you good night, my lord.”

  “And I you, my lady,” he responded courteously.

  Magdalen regarded him quizzically. “Are you drunken, my lord?”

  “Not in the least.”

  “Everyone else is,” she observed.

  “Sots, all of them,” he agreed. “I had thought you long gone to your bed.”

  “As indeed I am, sir.” She pushed aside the curtains and jumped lightly to the floor. “If you are intending to sit up all night, then I must join you.”

  He opened his arms to her and she nestled onto his lap, warm and soft and naked, her head resting on his shoulder. He ran his hands over her in a leisurely caress, then caught her chin and lowered his mouth to hers in a kiss as leisurely as the caress.

  “You were very wicked this evening, Magdalen.”

  “Yes, wasn’t I?” she agreed with a chuckle. “But not near as wicked as you, my Lord de Gervais.”

  He laughed against her mouth. “It was a lesson most richly deserved.”

  “And most richly enjoyed.”

  “I believe so,” he concurred solemnly, shifting her slightly on his knee so that he could explore more thoroughly the luxurious curves of her body, the silken skin rippling beneath his touch. Her hair was fragrant with the scent of apple blossom from the distilled flower water her women used to wash it, and the perfume mingled headily with the honeyed hints of burgeoning arousal. She arched and purred, all sensual promise, as always instantly, supremely responsive.

  “I have something to tell you,” she murmured, moving her mouth to his ear, her tongue a hot, moist lance darting within. He groaned softly, his body hardening beneath the warm, seductive weight of her.

  “Then tell me quickly, love, before I lose the ability to hear anything.”

  “I am with child.” The words emerged in a whispered rush against his neck.

  His hands stilled. So this was what was different about her, that indefinable quality he had noticed in the last weeks.

  “Does it not please you?” She looked up at him, anxiety in her voice and eyes.

  On one level it afforded him a sweeter pleasure than any he had ever known. But on another … He put the other from him. “Yes, my love, it pleases me.” He smiled reassuringly, brushing a dark swatch of her hair from her forehead. “I should have expected it, of course, but for some reason I didn’t.”

  “It must have happened at the very beginning,” she said. “Erin believes the child will come in May or June.”

  He said nothing for a minute, calculating as she had done earlier that the child she had lost would have been born in March or April. With a little management, this baby could be passed off as the heir of Edmund de Bresse. The thought brought him neither pleasure nor relief.

  “Are you well?” he asked.

  “Wonderfully.” She stretched against him, her arms sliding around his neck. “I am most wonderfully content to be carrying your child.”

  He allowed the soft assertion of her love to embrace him, to seep into him, to bring him a joy deep enough to overcome the sorrow he felt for all that could not be. He stroked her back, thinking of the perilous nature of childbearing, of that dreadful storm-tossed night on the ship. “You must look after yourself, pippin. There’s to be no more riding to hounds, no long journeying.”

  “But I am perfectly well and strong, not even sick anymore.” She sat up. “I cannot retire to bed for six months, Guy.”

  “You must take no risks after the last time,” he said, sitting back, holding her hips lightly. “God knows it is a hazardous enough business at the best of times, and this is soon after you miscarried.”

  “I wish I had not told you if you are going to fret me with cosseting.”

  “Sweetheart, I will not cosset you, but I will forbid unnecessary exertion.”

  “But how are you to know what is unnecessary? What do men know of these matters?”

  “Quite enough,” he declared. “And what we do not know we can guess. Now, I will hear no more argument.”

  Magdalen chewed her thumbnail, regarding him with a frown, half vexed and half touched by this concern which she sensed was going to prove both confining and exasperating. Then she shrugged. This was hardly a good moment for argument, and there were much pleasanter ways to occupy themselves. She was about to initiate one of the ways when the night was shattered by a frenzied pealing.

  “The tocsin,” she said, even as Guy with a muttered oath lifted her from his knee and stood up. “They are ringing the tocsin.”

  “Get back to your own apartments,” he commanded, striding to the door. “Immediately.”

  “Is it an attack?”

  “Go!” The sounds of running feet came from the corridor outside.

  Magdalen just had time to seize her robe from the bed and leap through the door into the private passage before the door to Guy’s chamber burst open to admit his squire and pages.

  “My lord … my lord … they are ringing the tocsin,” Stefan gasped. “It is a brigand attack on the town.”

  “Cease your gabble and fetch my lord’s gambeson,” the squire said brusquely. “And you, Theo, bring the chainmail.”

  Geoffrey was a squire to gladden the most exacting heart, Guy reflected, thankful that he did not have to take his pages to task himself while his mind was whirling. Of all the damnable nights to have picked, when half the castle was in no fit state to take up arms and ride abroad. At least the men-at-arms in the garrison would be sober. They had not been given permission to join in the debauchery and knew full well the harsh penalties for disobedience in such a matter.

  Magdalen flew down the passage to her own apartments, casting aside the robe and rummaging in the wardrobe for her clothes. Erin and Margery, flushed with more than excitement, came running in answer to her summons.

  “It’s an attack on the town, they are saying, my lady,” they both gasped. “In the middle of the night!”

  “Hardly Christian,” Magdalen said dryly. “Help me dress. There will be much to do before this night is over … No, not that gown, ’tis too fine for the work we will have to do. Bring me the brown wool.”

  The brown wool gown was of simple cut and adorned only by the silver belt clasped at her hip. Her little jeweled dagger hung in its sheath, beside it a velvet pouch containing such useful articles as scissors, needles, and the key to the strongbox where her jewelry was kept. She took the cloak Erin handed her and hurried from her apartment by the public way, down the outside stairs and into the inner court. All was bustle and confusion as people were hauled from stupor and dissipation by the clarion call of the tocsin, still rending the night.

  In the place d’armes, there was more order, the scene brilliantly lit with
flaming torches, the men-at-arms mounted, archers in neat ranks behind them. Magdalen noted that their guests were all there, armed and mounted on their destriers, the call to arms and the smell of battle clearly potent enough to dispel the effects of the evening. Standards snapped in the sharpening wind, and she saw Guy instantly, his jupon with the Gervais dragon over his armor, his visor for the moment up as he surveyed the scene. The standards of Gervais and Bresse flew at the head of his own knights.

  She wanted to go to him, to offer him a word of encouragement, a prayer for his safety, but she knew he would not welcome such womanly weakness. She could sense, even at a distance, the warrior’s excitement at the prospect of battle. It was an excitement that transcended the tenderness of the lover. His life was dedicated to this and to nothing else, and it would be so until he met his death.

  He dropped his visor, the heralds blew the battle cry, and Guy de Gervais, his knights at his back, rode beneath the portcullis, the iron-shod hooves of his massive destrier ringing on the drawbridge.

  Magdalen ran up the staircase to the battlements, watching the thundering force, the bugles calling their eerily magnificent call, descend upon those who dared to attack the dependents of the suzerainty of de Bresse. The drawbridge was raised when the last archer had crossed, the portcullis lowered, securing the castle from the possibility of invasion in the absence of its defenders. Smoke from the town filled the air, and she could hear screams and cries and the thud of the bombard against the town walls.

  Abruptly, she turned away and went back to the outer ward. She had her own work to do, and there was little point speculating on what was happening outside the castle. The great hall still bore the evidence of the night’s excesses, tables upturned, wine spilled on the rushes, dogs nosing for scraps. But the seneschal had already begun to gather the sleepy, drunken varlets together.

  “We will need water, seneschal,” Magdalen said, going over to him. “Hot water in abundance.”

  “Aye, my lady, I will have order sent to the kitchens.” The seneschal looked rather pale around the gills himself, Magdalen noted, but he was doing his best to supervise the clearing of the hall to receive the returning warriors, who would need water and space to remove their armor and tend to what minor hurts they might have garnered.

  Major hurts would be the province of the infirmary, and Magdalen hastened there next. She was relieved to see that Master Elias, the apothecary, had obviously not joined in the evening’s dissolution. He greeted her briskly, indicated the rows of pallets, the piles of bandages, the oils and salves, the simmering cauldrons on the fires at each end of the long room. Her supervision of the arrangements made to receive the returning force was unquestioned. It was the task of a chatelaine, and she had grown up in the border castle of a Lord Marcher with the example of Lady Elinor of Bellair before her.

  Satisfied that all was in order, she returned to her watch upon the battlements. The screams from the town had ceased, although a pall of smoke still lay heavily in the graying light. Faint sounds of steel upon steel floated in the dawn air, but they came from the plain beyond the town. The brigands had clearly been driven off. Had they not expected such a sizable defensive force? Perhaps, in the usual manner of these wandering bands, they were satisfied with seizing what they could before being forced to retreat.

  Magdalen stood watching as dawn broke fully and she could look down on the town and make out that the north wall had been breached by the bombard. If the brigands had entered the town, there had been ample cause for screaming. Later, she would visit the town and see what succor could be provided to the townsfolk from the castle supplies, but for now she could think only of Guy’s return.

  It was full morning, however, before she could see the moving mass of horsemen on the plain below, growing more identifiable as they approached the town. They were moving in orderly fashion, stragglers, walking wounded, and litter bearers protected by a group of men-at-arms. The bugle called in the still morning air, the call of victory. The standards all flew proudly as the party ascended the hill and the portcullis was raised and the drawbridge lowered, and they filed into the place d’armes.

  Guy de Gervais rode at the head, his natural advantages of height and breadth accentuated by his erect bearing. Magdalen drew a deep, steadying breath as she watched him ride into the place d’armes, then she sped down the staircase, slowing on the bottom step to walk to his stirrup with the stately, measured pace of the chatelaine.

  “I give thanks for your deliverance, my lord. And thanks for your protection.” The ritual words came easily to her tongue, but they were invested with so much more than ritual as she looked up at him. His visor was one more pushed back, and the bright blue eyes scanned her face, assessing the effects of her vigil. She took the cup handed to her by a page and held it up for him.

  “My thanks, lady,” he said quietly, and drank the stirrup cup before riding to the mounting block and swinging his cumbersomely clad body from the great height of his destrier.

  Magdalen went into the hall, waiting to receive the knights and their attendants as they came within. The women of the castle were waiting to assist them with hot water as they stripped off armor and the clothes beneath, to proffer the cups of mulled wine to invigorate tired blood and the fragrant oils and salves to soothe bruised muscles.

  Magdalen moved among them until Guy came into the hall. Then she went purposefully toward him. “I will attend my lord,” she said to the page who came forward. “If you will assist him to remove his armor.” It was her duty, as lady of the castle, to attend the man who had defended her, her property, and her vassals. “But first do you fetch me the oils.”

  “You would be better in bed,” Guy said as the page departed on his errand. He discarded his helmet. “And I do not think this is work for you.” He gestured to the crowded hall, where bare-chested men, their hose unlaced, were receiving the ministrations of the attendant women and pages.

  “I believe it to be so,” she attested quietly. “It was not a work from which the Lady Elinor turned. Why should I?”

  “The Lady Elinor attended her brother,” he reminded her with a weary sigh. “You would be expected to attend your husband.”

  “You stand in the place of my husband,” she returned with the same quiet determination. “If you will not accomplish this work here in the public hall, then let us repair to your chamber and I will attend you there.”

  Guy looked at her, and a slight smile touched his eyes despite his weariness. Magdalen was at her most determined, again and, in truth, he could not dispute her logic. No one would question the rightness of her attentions, but they must take place here in the hall with the rest. He removed his jupon. “As you wish, my lady.”

  She gave him a little nod and beckoned one of the serving wenches. “Bring hot water for my lord.”

  As always, she took delight in the lean hard body, the breadth of chest, the swell of muscle in thigh and arm, but she gave no indication of her inordinate pleasure in performing the ritual ministrations, readying the hot, wet cloths to cleanse and moisten the skin in preparation for the oils, massaging the oils into muscle and sinew with all the strength she could muster.

  “There, my lord.” Slightly breathless, she stepped back from him. Tiny beads of perspiration glistened on her brow, witness to the heat in the hall and her effortful completion of her self-appointed tasks. “You are eased, I trust.”

  “On the contrary, lady,” he murmured. “You have merely created tensions where there were none before.”

  “For shame, sir,” she chided, her eyes sparkling for all their tiredness. “After a night of battle, I do not believe you have strength for aught but rest.”

  “Oh, ye of little faith,” he mocked, putting on his shirt again and beginning to lace his hose. “But it’s certainly time you sought your bed.”

  “My work is not done, my lord.” She wiped her oily hands on a damp cloth before passing her forearm across her brow. “There is meat and drink to be s
erved to the defenders of this castle.”

  “But not by you,” he said. “You have kept vigil all night.”

  “I am not alone.” She gestured around the teeming hall. “I dare swear there is not a soul in the castle who has had rest this night.”

  He regarded her with a slight frown. It was unlike Magdalen to offer him argument, although he knew her more then capable of it. “I would like you to go to bed,” he said slowly.

  “And have me renege on my duties?” she said. “I am chatelaine of this castle, sir.”

  “And I am lord of this castle,” he declared. “And as such I excuse you from your tasks and bid you seek your bed.”

  Magdalen stood irresolute. She felt the need to complete her work in the hall as a personal imperative. It was not right that she should absent herself before all was properly ordered for the comfort of those who had defended her and her vassals this night. But as always, she shrank from incurring Guy’s displeasure.

  “I am not in the least weary,” she ventured. “I would wish to finish what I started.”

  He looked at the tired eyes, the smudged purple shadows in the hollows beneath them. There was a translucency to her pallor that reminded him suddenly of Gwendoline, and he was touched with the old spur of fear. “You will oblige me in this,” he said in a tone he had used with her but once before, and that long ago. He looked around the hall. “Erin! Margery!”

  The two women left their tasks and hastened to answer the summons. “Escort your lady to her chamber and put her to bed,” he directed. “Tend her well. Her condition ill fits her for a night’s vigil.”

  “Yes, lord.” The two curtsied. “I will prepare a bowl of white bread and curds,” Erin said. “Come, my lady.”

  Even had Magdalen wished to continue the argument, it was inconceivable that she do so in the presence of her women. Magdalen went with them without a backward glance, and Guy stood reflectively, regretting his flash of harshness. He understood why she had wished to discharge her responsibilities, and he gave her credit for it. If she had not been pregnant, he would have encouraged her, but suddenly she had become acutely vulnerable in his eyes, the focus of all his fears, the living reminder of his helplessness in the face of Gwendoline’s agonized wasting. He would not lose Magdalen to the inherent perils of womanhood, not if extra vigilance and care could ensure her health and safety.