Having silenced one of his companions by driving him deep into a goblet of good wine, Thomas turned to Henry. The man was leaning over the table, a strange lapse in courteous behavior, and his hands were clasped so tightly his knuckles were white. His head was bowed as if in prayer. Thomas glanced at the man’s empty trencher. Henry had eaten nothing. The poor would get little nourishment from his leavings.
Thomas looked down the table at Juliana, then back at his silent companion. Brother and sister were much alike, he decided. Robert might be short like Prioress Eleanor, but he was also muscular. Henry, despite his round, fat face, was as slight in form as was his sister. A weakling son might not sit well with a battle-hardened father.
His curiosity still stirred over the morning events, and Thomas wondered if that was part of the trouble between them. Delicate or not, Henry had certainly shown no hesitancy in drawing a weapon against Robert earlier in the day. Was he trying to prove his manhood? Or did ill will truly exist between the future brothers-in-law?
A loud but pleasant laugh caught his attention and he looked down the high table once again. Next to Henry sat Sir Geoffrey and on the other side was the host, Baron Adam. Immediately to his left was the Lady Isabelle, who sat next to Robert, then the Prioress Eleanor and the Lady Juliana. Sister Anne had chosen to take her meal with the sick boy.
Then the Lady Isabelle laughed once more and Thomas saw her poking at some part of Robert below the table edge. The face of his prioress’ brother turned a deep burgundy as he quickly rose and, after a brief word to his father, left the table.
Thomas couldn’t hear what had been said but noted that his prioress was leaning over to say something to Sir Geoffrey’s wife. Isabelle drew back her head, her teeth bared in a self-righteous smirk. As she did, Henry leaned back in his chair with an audible groan. His robe shifted and Thomas saw one excellent reason for his dining companion’s distress. Henry was suffering from a rather impressive erection.
Seeing the direction of Thomas’ glance, the man blushed and bunched his robes over the offending member.
From just a bit further up the table, however, other eyes had also seen the cause of Henry’s discomfiture. Sir Geoffrey’s face was pale as he slammed his goblet down.
***
During the course of the dinner, Eleanor had glanced down the table several times to look at Brother Thomas, a habit she had tried with no success to break. This once, however, she could blame the wandering gaze on amusement. Thomas was in conversation with the castle priest, his head bent back as far as possible from Father Anselm’s mouth.
She smiled. Indeed, her father’s priest had breath so foul that Satan himself might flee from it. For the preservation of souls at Wynethorpe Castle, this might be a blessing; for poor Brother Thomas, it had most likely turned his stomach quite sour.
She shifted her attention back to her immediate companions and gestured to Robert to give her portion of the boar with its spicy sauce to the Lady Isabelle.
“How can your sister bear to forsake this meat?” Isabelle asked as she licked her lips in anticipation the moment that the extra portion hit her trencher. “Oh, I suppose you took some vow, Lady Eleanor,” she continued, waving the concept away with the hand not occupied with her wine cup. “I would find such things very wearisome.”
As Isabelle spoke, she leaned forward against the table. The gesture not only bespoke ill manners but also presented Robert, Eleanor, and the quiet Juliana with quite the view of her soft and ample breasts. The tightened cloth of her robe also accentuated, with a tantalizing shimmer, two erect nipples.
Eleanor blinked at the blatantly sexual display and hoped Sir Geoffrey had not seen any of it. Had Henry been sitting in Juliana’s place, she thought, he would surely have been outraged at such an immodest display of what should have remained the private charms of his stepmother. Robert, on the other hand, had seen it all. Although he had drunk little wine during the meal, his face now flushed a blotched red.
Juliana shifted uneasily beside Eleanor. “Vows are not tiresome to those who take them, my lady,” she said in a low voice.
“So you may say now, stepdaughter.” Isabelle hesitated ever so slightly. “Vows are right and proper for one of the Lady Eleanor’s vocation for cert.” She slipped a palm under one breast, raising it as if offering a gift. “Still, you are not destined for the convent, are you? It is said that red meat heats the blood and makes one lusty for the marriage bed. You would do well to heed that and fortify yourself well in advance of the day.” She smiled and leaned back into her chair. “Forgive me. I forget. You have never known a man, have you? Indeed, you would know nothing of such things, stepdaughter.” She laughed. “Have no fear, Juliana, before you and Robert marry I will explain what a man and woman do on the night after they take their vows at the church door.” Then she slipped her hand over Robert’s thigh, and her laughter rang sharply over the noise of the diners. “I promise, my lord, that your wife will come well prepared to delight you in the thrust and parry of your marital bed.” She winked in the direction of Eleanor and Juliana.
Robert brushed her hand away as gently as possible. His face turned a deeper scarlet as he rose and bowed to his father. “I beg pardon, my lord, but I must see that the oxen have sufficient hay now that the snows have come.”
Adam nodded and went back to his discussion with Sir Geoffrey.
Robert turned with a perfunctory bow to the three women, muttered the standard courtesy, “much good do it ye,” and left the hall as quickly as good manners allowed.
Although her father’s expression had changed little, Eleanor knew from the movement of his eyes that he had noticed the reason for Robert’s rapid exit from the dining hall. His opinion of Isabelle could not have improved.
She heard a soft groan and turned her head. When Robert left, Juliana had said nothing. Now one tear crested in the corner of her eye and slowly rolled down the woman’s cheek. Her old playfellow may have been her elder by only a year or so, Eleanor thought, but she had the face of a much older woman with eyes sunken into darkness, cheeks gray and hollow with melancholy.
Juliana had once been such a sunny companion, always the first to think of innocent mischief. With a smile Eleanor remembered the day Juliana had climbed a tree and dropped a skirt full of rose petals on the woman who was now her stepmother. At the time, Isabelle had looked up at the impish girl and laughed with a simple joy, blowing at the pink petals drifting down on her as if they were fragile bubbles. The two had been as sisters then, Eleanor remembered. Now they seemed so sad together and much at odds.
Eleanor shook her head at the memory, then leaned over to Isabelle and said in a low voice, “This is neither the time nor place to jest over the marriage night, my lady. No agreement has yet been reached between our families. When it has, there will be much opportunity for such fond ribaldry.”
Isabelle’s fixed smile turned yet more brittle. “An admirable speech from a lady married to Our Lord,” she said, then bent her head in a mockery of a bow. “So that I not offend your virgin ears further, lady, I shall indeed cease what you choose to call my fond ribaldry.” With the petulance of a bored child, she slouched back into her chair and dipped her finger into the pewter cup in front of her and made waves in the wine. Then the brightness in her eyes dulled, she drained her cup in a trice, and her face flushed with the drink.
What a difference just a few years had made in both these women, Eleanor noted, as she chose to remain silent in the face of Isabelle’s ill temper. Like Juliana, Isabelle was not the light-hearted girl she remembered either, a child who spontaneously hugged her friends and loved to crowd into the lap of her husband’s first wife for the maternal affection that lady gave with as much abundance as if Isabelle had been her own child. As Eleanor recalled, the girl had been an orphan, not even distantly related to the Lavenhams. Sir Geoffrey’s elder brother had received her wardship from the king and enjoyed the income from her lands while she was yet a child. Since he had never
married, he had given Isabelle, with a small allowance for maintenance, to Sir Geoffrey and his wife to rear. There she had had a loving home. Until now, it seemed. In truth, despite her air of self-satisfied superiority, Isabelle looked no happier than her old friend. What had happened to cause such estrangement? Was it really jealousy? Could it be, as Sir Geoffrey had suggested, that Juliana resented his remarriage? And why had Isabelle married the father rather than the son? What…
Harsh masculine laughter shattered Eleanor’s reflection. She looked up and saw Sir Geoffrey slam his goblet of wine down on the table. A burgundy stain spread across the white linen tablecloth.
Isabelle sat bolt upright, her face paled unevenly as she stared at her husband.
“Boy, you are a spineless whelp!” Sir Geoffrey snarled at his son.
“My lord…” Henry’s round face was crimson.
“My lord,” his father mimicked in a high-pitched voice. “When you fathered me, you gave me balls, but I have since lost them.” His voice dropped to a growling bass. “I cannot provide you with everything, boy. If you were a man, you’d get what you needed on your own.” He looked down from the high table to the benches filled with men of lower status and his lips twisted into a thin smile. “But why should I think him a man? He has never given me reason to assume such.” He nodded to his captive audience in the hall, then pointed to his son. “I fear his mother must have dreamed of Eve the night this one was conceived for she left me with a mincing cokenay instead of a son. Perhaps,” he continued, turning to Henry, “you had best ask my wife for advice on the whitening she uses on her face and give your braies to a man, for a cokenay has no use for men’s attire.” He gazed around the hall and smiled at the sporadic laughter that greeted his angry wit. “Perhaps I’ll see if I can find a man willing to be your husband amongst her many rejected admirers.” Then the look in his eyes turned hard. He bent down for something under the table. As he rose, he tossed the raw testicles of the now roasted boar into Henry’s lap. “Unless these can give you what you lack.”
With his face turned as white as the table covering, Henry threw his goblet at his father, missing his head by inches, then stormed out of the hall.
Sir Geoffrey pursed his mouth and fluttered his hands. “Oh, but you frightened me so! What shall I do? Cokenay! You had best find Robert. Since you spurned the ones I offered, perhaps he can find balls to hang between your legs,” he shouted with a mocking laugh at his son’s retreating back, then lowering his voice, “although I doubt anyone could fill your lack.”
Isabelle grabbed her goblet, now refilled with wine, and gulped it dry. A rivulet of red slipped down her chin and dripped like a bloody tear onto her robe.
Juliana sat with head bowed, motionless, silent, her hands gripped together against her waist so tightly they looked bloodless.
Eleanor watched her father reach up and grasp his old friend’s arm, then gently pull him back into his chair and whisper in his ear.
Sir Geoffrey roared with laughter.
Chapter Eleven
Thomas could not sleep. Eating with Father Anselm was distasteful enough but sharing quarters with the man was more than Thomas could take, now that he need not spend his nights in Richard’s chambers. Indeed, he had grown accustomed to some seclusion at Tyndal, where each monk had a small but separate place to sleep, but such lack of privacy here was the least of his problems. Father Anselm was not only foul-smelling, he snored, and, to make Thomas feel further cursed, the priest was a light sleeper.
“Going to the chapel to pray, brother?” Anselm’s head popped up the instant Thomas’ feet touched the rush-covered floor. “I’ll join you.”
Thomas rubbed his hand across his aching eyes in frustration. “Sleep on, good priest. My eyes will not close and I hoped to walk by myself in quiet contemplation until they became heavy again.”
Anselm was already standing and adjusting the cowl of his robe around his neck. “Lonely contemplation for a meat-eating man is dangerous. It might lead to sinful thoughts and…” he gestured in the direction of Thomas’ crotch, “solitary abuse. You need the discipline of company.” The minor adjustment of his attire completed, he reached over and grabbed Thomas by the arm with greater strength than such a spare frame would suggest he possessed. “Together, let us go to the chapel and pray!”
Thomas was too tired to argue further nor did he care to explain to Anselm the reasons he rarely suffered from the sin of Onan. “Very well,” he sighed and wearily headed for the door.
At least the priest chose not to speak on the way down the dimly lit passage to the stairs that led to the inner ward. Foul though it might be, only his breath whitened the darkness as they rounded the outside wall of the great hall to the chapel entrance. For this lack of talkativeness, Thomas raised his eyes heavenward in silent gratitude.
Later, after they had each slid to their knees, Thomas found himself admiring Anselm’s ability to ignore the freezing stone floor. He might find the body of his companion thoroughly repellent, but, as the castle priest plunged into a prayer as lengthy and ardent as a lover’s plea, he felt a brief twinge of jealousy. This man might actually have had a calling to his vocation. Thomas had not come willingly to the priesthood.
As he felt the chill of the floor seep through his woolen robe to numb his knees, he looked up at the carving of the twisted body of Jesus on the cross. The moving shadows from the flickering candles blackened the hollows between the jagged ribs but hid whatever expression the artist had carved upon the face. Thomas knew that there would be no individuality of features. They were irrelevant. The artist’s sole focus would be the message of the Crucifixion. Indeed, Thomas did not need to see the face. Both agony and hope would be there. That he knew. The pain was understandable, the hope expected, but surely there would have been a hint of gratitude as well, indeed a joy that it would all soon be over? He thought so. After all, hadn’t Thomas once looked upon death with some sense of eager anticipation?
He shivered, but the cause was not the icy floor. In a flash of memory, he was back in prison. He stifled a cry as he once again felt powerless, bound and naked, while the jailer, grunting like a pig in rut, clawed his buttocks apart and raped him on the rotting filth of that jail floor. Thomas bit into his lip to chase the image away, but the metallic taste only reminded him of the blood trickling between his legs after the jailer had left him.
Heresy or not, Thomas found himself wondering if the jailers had raped Jesus too. The Gospels had said naught of such a thing, recording only the beating and the crown of thorns. Indeed, had a rape occurred, he knew no one would have spoken of it.
When one man raped another, it might be the ultimate humiliation for the victim, yet it tainted the rapist as well. Such feats were not bragged about in taverns or even confessed in secret, except on a deathbed with the red maw of Hell opening before a man’s failing eyes. Nevertheless, Jesus might have been raped. After all, such an act of degradation could well have been deemed proper for a man who preached love in a time when others were fomenting rebellion and war.
Thomas shook the thought from his mind. Heresy indeed! He looked upward. No bolt of lightning had struck him for the thought, however, nor could he feel any honest guilt at his wondering. In the icy silence of that chapel, the only thing Thomas could feel was a kinship with the man on the cross. If he could not offer God a true calling to the priesthood, he could bring compassion born of torment for those who suffered. Perhaps God would be willing to tolerate that until a deeper faith took its place?
The rough stone was cutting into his knees and he shifted backward to sit on his heels. Father Anselm was so deep in prayer he did not notice. Thomas admired the man’s ability to concentrate so. When Thomas had first arrived at Tyndal, he had been unable to pray at all. Even now, he could not approach God with the submissive speech of a good vassal to his liege lord. Instead, he had begun talking to God as if He had been a boon companion, a respected one, and spoke of his day, his doubts and his problem
s. No burst of flame had shattered the East Anglian sky to fry his body and hurl his soul into Hell. If such presumption was another instance of heresy, God was being quite tolerant of him, Thomas thought, but he did feel some envy over the pure faith of men like Anselm.
Or women like the one he now noticed in the shadows some distance from him. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. Or were there two figures in the darkness, one an indistinct double of the other? He blinked and one seemed to fade. Surely his tired eyes were playing a game with him, he decided.
The figure he could see with more clarity was slight and the length of the robe, sufficient to drape over the feet, suggested a feminine style. It must be a woman. Perhaps it was the Lady Isabelle, or more likely the Lady Juliana. The former seemed a woman more attached to the delights of the here and now, the latter more likely to long for the joys of the hereafter. Thomas shook his head. Robert’s designated beloved was indeed a somber one.
He knew it could not be either Sister Anne or his prioress. The former was too tall, the latter was too short, and he was sure either or both were with Richard. The boy might be improving, but they had each told him they planned to split the watch over the lad that night when the air was more malevolent.
Ah, the lad! The thought of Richard brought some warmth back into Thomas’ soul. Marriage and any legitimate issue had always been out of the question for Thomas. As a by-blow, albeit of an earl, he had had a comfortable enough home as a child but no hope of title, and, since he had not been his father’s only son born on the wrong side of the blanket, he had had little chance of land. His father might have provided him with a good horse and armor if he had asked, but the life of a mercenary or landless knight, pillaging and jousting for his dinner, had never appealed. At the time he had doubted his father’s wisdom, but now he knew that his best hope of a comfortable future had been that of a clerk in minor orders.
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