Almost Innocent

by Jane Feather

  Gulls wheeled and called, swooping low over the deck looking for littering scraps. Sailors were running to their stations now, preparing to drop the square-rigged sail as the vessel drew closer to the quay. On the quay stood the harbormen, ready to receive and make fast the massive ropes once the ship dropped anchor.

  Edmund stayed on deck, enjoying the bustle. His squire and pages would see to the ordering of his possessions and their unloading. Making landfall this early in the day meant they could set out for Picardy as soon as the three ships were docked and horses, men, arms, and provisions were assembled. If they met no delays, they should not have to spend more than five nights on the road. He would send a herald on ahead with an escort of lancers to alert his wife and household to his arrival. A small party, traveling on swift horses, could expect to reach the Castle de Bresse a day earlier than the main body, and his wife would be ready to welcome him with full honors on the morrow.

  The sun came up on a May morning, a delicate cobweb of a morning, and he was reminded of another May Day, when he had gone out before dawn to pick marigolds by the river before the first touch of sun had dried the dew. It was a posy for his betrothed, a lively, dancing sprite of a girl with a long plait and sparkling gray eyes and an impatience with his obedience to courtly etiquette. He could see her now on that long-ago morning, distributing his carefully picked flowers among her companions, thanking him gaily for his gift as if it had not been specially offered. And he could feel again his own chagrin. He had kissed her later as they played around the Maypole and the girls—children and maidens—ran squealing from the pursuit of swains, both serious and playful.

  He had kissed her out of chagrin and a fierce determination to stake his claim to her attention. Had things changed between them that much in the intervening years? Wasn’t he still trying to stake his claim to her attention? Oh, she accorded him all the public respect a wife must accord her husband, but when they were alone, he knew he craved so much more than her easy smile, relaxed companionship, willing participation in their bed. He wanted her to match him. He wanted to feel that perhaps he had the edge, that she could possibly want more from him than he was prepared to give … He wanted to feel that she could feel as he did.

  He lifted his face to the sun. In this land, he would begin anew … They would begin anew. His memory of hovering in death’s antechamber was still a vivid spur to the enjoyment of life and gratitude for God’s mercy. He was in many ways newborn, and his life stretched ahead, a blank parchment on which he would write what he chose. He would inscribe his love, and he would create the rhyming couplet.

  An hour later, the herald, charged with the news of the imminent arrival of the Sieur Edmund de Bresse, galloped out of the town and down the white, winding track toward the plains of Picardy.

  Guy walked into the pleasaunce under the brilliant blue of the May sky. The scent of lilac hung heavy. He heard the soft strumming of a lute coming from the center of the garden where a fountain plashed into a stone bowl and doves cooed from the dovecote set among thyme and rosemary, sage and marjoram in the herb garden.

  He trod softly, hoping to catch the little party unaware, to watch unespied for a moment. He was remembering another May Day when the woman now sitting with her baby was herself a child. An eager, impetuous, laughing, loving child, who had begged him for a silver penny and pouted because they had traveled too fast to enjoy the jongleurs and other sights of the journey to London.

  He stood behind a laburnum, concealed by the mass of golden flowers drooping on leafy stalks, a smile on his lips as he watched. Theo was playing his lute, singing softly. The lad had nimble fingers on the strings and a sweet, well-pitched voice. Erin and Margery sat stitching tiny garments with lace edging, a basket frothing with cambric and lace between them as they sewed for the baby. The baby slept in her mother’s arms.

  Magdalen was sitting in a cushioned chair in the shade of a willow tree, playing idly with the fat yellow catkins drifting in her lap. She was dressed in a simple cotehardie of ivory linen, a white silk snood confining her hair, and her face in repose showed him a deep contentment, the eyelids lowered languidly over eyes that he knew would be quiet, her mouth soft … but as sensual as ever. She was still a little pale, but it was not the pallor of ill health, more of the necessary peaceful lethargy of recuperation.

  “I know you are there, my lord.” She spoke softly, turning her head toward the laburnum, a smile on her lips. “Do you come to spy upon us, sir?”

  “No, I came but to see how you did.” Laughing, he stepped out of concealment. “That is a pretty song, Theo. If you paid as much attention to your Latin as you do to your singing and playing, you would be more at ease in body and soul, I believe.”

  “Oh, for shame, my lord,” Magdalen protested. “To offer a compliment as excuse for castigation is of all things the most ungenerous.”

  Theo was blushing fiercely at this reminder of his recent troubles at the hand of the master of pages. Guy took pity on him. “You are right, my lady. I withdraw the castigation and leave the compliment. Would you find Geoffrey, Theo, and tell him that I will ride out within the hour.”

  The relieved page made good his escape, and Guy, still laughing, sat down at a stone bench beside the dovecote. A bowl of corn sat on the paving stone, and he scooped up a handful, holding out his palm, flat and still, as he watched Magdalen and his daughter. A dove alighted on his palm with a whirr of wings, delicately took a morsel of corn and flew off.

  “Where do you ride, my lord?” Magdalen moved the sleeping infant to her other arm.

  “To Seriac. There is some trouble over the raising of taxes,” he said easily. “The farmers need reminding that the Sieur de Bresse must have his revenues if he is to provide adequate protection for his vassals.” Another dove came to feed from his palm.

  “It is tame work for a knight,” Magdalen said. “Do you not find it so? You would prefer to be campaigning, would you not?”

  “I do my overlord’s bidding,” Guy replied with a smile. “For the nonce, I am content.” He tossed the corn to the ground, where it was swooped upon by a bevy of doves, and held out his arms. “I would hold the child, if you think I will not wake her.”

  “She will be hungry soon, anyway.” Magdalen reached over to lay Zoe in her father’s arms. “She has grown, do you not think? Do you find her heavier?”

  Guy considered the question. In truth, the child was so light he could barely feel her in any substantive way, but then he was accustomed to hefting the great weight of sword and lance, so perhaps it was not surprising he should feel this diminutive creature as no more than the weight of a butterfly. He gave Magdalen the answer she desired and expected, however. “A little, I believe.” He touched the baby’s nose, the cleft of her chin, and she snuffled, the little mouth pursing, her nose wrinkling. He laughed in sheer delight at the tiny perfection of her.

  Zoe’s mouth opened abruptly on a thinly demanding cry, her eyes scrunching. Reluctantly, Guy returned the baby to her mother. “She has need of you, I believe.”

  “I will go in and feed her.” Magdalen handed the child to the waiting Erin and accepted Guy’s arm to stand up. She leaned heavily on him for a minute. “I am becoming stronger, but it is so tedious. I shall be glad to go riding and hawking again.”

  “All in good time,” he said. “I will take you within.” He held her arm as they left the pleasaunce and returned to Magdalen’s apartments.

  She sighed with relief as he eased her down onto the bed.

  “I will permit myself to feel feeble for one more week. Then I am determined to be quite well and strong again.”

  “Remember that you are feeding the child, lady,” Erin said. “If you would put her to a wet nurse, you would regain your strength all the quicker.”

  “That I will not do,” Magdalen declared with the firmness of one who has reiterated the statement many times.

  “Then you must not complain,” Guy counseled. “I must leave you now, but I wil
l return by vespers.” He kissed the top of her head. “Rest now.”

  Half an hour later, with his knight companions, their squires, and a small troop of men-at-arms, he left the castle on a mission of intimidation. It was, as Magdalen had said, poor work for a knight, but it had to be done. He did not like doing it, however. The French peasantry were already over-burdened with the taxes that had been raised to pay for the long years of a war whose outcome affected them only in terms of how much depredation they had had to suffer, and many of the more substantial peasantry were still struggling to pay off the ransoms of their menfolk.

  He could enjoy the ride, however. Spring had come late this year after a more than ordinarily wet winter, and the deeply rutted roads had been impassable for many weeks. Now, however, they were crowded with the usual medley of travelers. A merchant and his pack train moved cumbersomely to one side as the de Gervais herald blew imperatively for passage, but around the next corner the de Gervais party gave right of way to a courier wearing the tabard of the papal court of Avignon, galloping with his escort as if escaping the devils of hell. A pardoner, with his bag of papal indulgences, sat in the budding hedgerow, enjoying the sunshine and touting for traveling custom among peripatetic sinners. They passed a peddler whose sack hung open on his back, and Guy drew rein, attracted by a wooden doll with painted eyes and a tiny doll carriage designed to be drawn by mice. It was absurd to buy such a toy for a little girl as yet but two weeks old, but he did so, half embarrassed and half delighted, thinking how Magdalen would laugh at him.

  But as he continued on his way, his reflections, prompted by the thought of Zoe, turned to more disturbing matters. The bad weather had meant that they had lived without much news of the outside world, since travelers and pilgrims stayed beside their hearths when snow drifted thick or the rain churned the roads and lanes into a mire. As soon as conditions had made it feasible, he had sent a messenger to London, to John of Gaunt, with news of his granddaughter’s birth, but he could not expect a response for another month. The response would contain further commands for the prince’s vassal, he was certain.

  The isolation made him restless, and with the budding trees and the busily building birds had come the need to venture into the outside world again, to discover what was going on in the circles of power he had inhabited in the past. His overlord would not leave him forever as proxy suzerain of the de Bresse fiefdom. In fact, it could be said his present task was accomplished. The castle was securely held, its chatelaine well established, a healthy heir in the nursery. Charles of France could stake no legitimate claim now. And all messages from Olivier indicated that the de Beauregards had other fish to fry; their interest in their cousin died beside a series of intrigues involving a bridegroom for Philippe de Beauregard’s daughter.

  The Duke of Lancaster must surely now have another use for Guy de Gervais. He would also have a husband in mind for the Lady de Bresse, who could not be left husbandless for much longer.

  With the news of the birth of Zoe, Guy de Gervais had included a request to wed the child’s widowed mother. He had decided he had nothing to lose by making the request, although he was well aware that Magdalen of Lancaster was too valuable a prize to be given away for nothing, and as he had thought before, he had nothing left to give Lancaster that his overlord did not already possess.

  He said none of this to Magdalen, who seemed not to recognize the inevitability of an end to their idyll. She ignored his hints that she would soon have another husband, behaving as if such a thing were inconceivable, and he did not know how to break through such self-deception. But if he were honest, he had not chosen to break through it. He had told himself she should be left to enjoy a serene pregnancy and, now, that she should have peace and quiet in which to convalesce. But he was going to have to face up to the task sooner rather than later.

  They were dispiriting thoughts to take on a May Day ride through the spring countryside, and it was a severe countenance he showed to the recalcitrant villagers of Seriac. Their spokesman, the village elder, faltered beneath the lord’s impassive, blue-eyed stare as he sat his horse outside the tavern, listening apparently unmoved, to the tale of crops lost through brigandage and the destruction of the copse that hitherto had supplied the village with sufficient wood for all its needs.

  Lord de Gervais looked around the circle of anxious men and women, small children clinging to skirts, peeping out at the magnificent, terrifying party of armored knights wearing over their mailshirts the blue and silver jupons emblazoned with the golden dragon of Gervais, carrying their great swords and lances at rest atop their majestic horses. The village elder had fallen silent, pulling unhappily on his straggly white beard, shuffling his clogs in the dust.

  Nothing would be gained by wringing from these already wrung withers the last drops of sweat and blood and tears, Guy realized. They must be given time to sow new crops, to find an alternative wood supply. But they must also pay some tribute to their overlord. He would take the tribute in labor, Guy decided. Two days a month from every able-bodied man over the age of sixteen.

  The villagers received the judgment initially in a stunned silence. They had expected no mercy; it was not a quality of life in this war-ravaged land. But slowly the realization that they had been granted a respite seeped through. Smiles, blackened or toothless but all genuine, appeared on the weary faces. Hands reached up to touch the dragon of Gervais embroidered on the lord’s blue and silver saddlecloth, the braided mane of his palfrey, the gleaming silver of his harness.

  Guy was not unused to the wondering worship of peasants. It had been accorded him when sieges had been lifted, villages rescued from brigands, isolated farms and cottages offered protection. Such grateful reverence was a knight’s due in return for his obligation to offer such services to the defenseless. But he quickly grew impatient, and after a final word to the village elder, he signaled to the herald to blow the note of departure. The party wheeled and left the village of Seriac.

  They arrived at the Castle de Bresse just as the bell for vespers was ringing. Guy paused only to divest himself of the sword and dagger at his belt, both of which he gave to Geoffrey, before hurrying into the chapel, followed by the rest of the party. Magdalen was sitting at the front, before the altar rail, and he could sense an extraordinary strain in her body as he slid into the pew beside her.

  She gave him a taut smile and handed him a parchment. It bore the seal of Lancaster. Frowning, he put it unopened beside him on the bench, as if reproving her for bringing such temporal matters into this holy place in the middle of the evening office. But the white parchment seemed to take on a glowing illumination, to become a menacing presence as it sat between them. Once or twice, he was aware that she touched it, tracing the seal with a fingertip.

  It was the first communication from England since the winter storms had put an end to sea travel, and Magdalen knew that it boded ill. She had wanted to open it, but the messenger had said it was for the eyes of the Lord de Gervais. He said he had been overlong upon the road, that his ship had gone aground off the coast of Brittany, that he had barely escaped with his life. He had been desperately anxious that the Lady Magdalen should understand the difficulties and dangers attendant upon his journey and should acknowledge that he had now discharged his duty by the safe delivery of the duke’s message to the suzerain of de Bresse, even though it was delivered four weeks later than it should have been. Knowing her father, Magdalen could only sympathize with the messenger’s anxiety.

  She had wanted to open it but had not had the courage, too inhibited by the scruples of conscience that forbade prying into the affairs of others, for all that she knew the message must concern her. It was for this reason that she had brought it into the chapel, hoping that Guy would waste no time in opening it. Instead, he had simply laid it down and frowned at her, so she sat discomfited and overweaningly anxious as the rolled parchment seemed to burn against her thigh through the fine material of her gown.

  Father Vivian dr
oned through the office. Magdalen knelt, stood, prayed as her neighbor did, without thought or concentration, anxious only for the end of the tiresome ritual. It came at last. Father Vivian pronounced the benediction, and Guy tucked the parchment into his belt and moved out of the pew, offering Magdalen his arm when he reached the aisle. She tried to hurry, but she was prevented by the measured pace he set as they preceded the rest of the household into the beginning dusk.

  “I wanted to open it, but I thought it might have vexed you,” she said breathlessly, as soon as they reached the court.

  “I am glad you restrained yourself,” he replied. “Such an act would undoubtedly have displeased me. And you can have had no reason for doing such a thing.”

  “But what does it say?”

  “How can I know that when I haven’t yet opened it?” He paused to say a few words to the seneschal who had followed them from the chapel, while Magdalen stood in a fever of impatience at his side, wondering how he could be so calm and apparently untroubled by that burning, malevolent paper bearing her father’s seal, pushed so casually into his belt.

  “I will go to my study,” he announced finally. “Geoffrey, attend me. I would remove this chainmail and my sword belt before supper.”