Within A Forest Dark

by Mary Ellen Johnson

  Which I most certainly am not.

  Elizabeth knew intellectually that very few males actually lived by the rules of courtly love, which included such improbabilities as, "Every lover regularly turns pale in the presence of his beloved," or "Jealousy, and therefore love, are increased when one suspects his beloved." Or that the frustrated suitor would suffer such lovesickness that he would loudly moan and lament to all and sundry that he must surely expire from unsatisfied desire.

  The closest she'd ever heard of a flesh-and-blood man pining for a woman had been when Matthew had lost his Margery Watson and that was a tale she'd only heard secondhand, seemed totally out of her brother's character and must therefore be considered suspect.

  Elizabeth accepted the fact that she wasn't beautiful like the ladies she saw at King Edward's court or the fictional concoctions of writers like Chretien de Troyes, who created immortal damoiselles possessing narrow waists and eyes that haunted the night. Her waist had never been narrow and her hands were larger than her husband's. But she did have a pleasantly musical voice. And her eyes were rather haunting. Or so she'd been told. Elizabeth assured herself that a man could indeed fall into their depths and be captivated forevermore. (Though that particular image always brought to mind tiny suitors floundering around inside her pupils, as if trapped in a bog.)

  Elizabeth thought suddenly of the winsome Bernard, one of her husband's retainers. Bernard of the chestnut hair and the nicely turned calves and the shy smile, who had never said more to her than "God give you good day," or "Pardon, m'lady," when passing her on the stairs, or "Might I take the lads to view the newest whelps in the kennels?"

  Sometimes Elizabeth imagined Bernard and her locked in a passionate kiss, though nothing more because courtly love wasn't supposed to be about physical consummation. And no flesh and blood man, not even the Black Prince or his handsome array of royal brothers could live up to their fictional counterparts.

  It was all a faerie tale. Not real life at all.

  Elizabeth's gaze, fixed upon the black marble, blurred and then came back into focus.

  Someday, when my boys are scattered and the solar is emptied of boisterous voices, I will put quill to hand and construct my own verses. Strictly for my private edification, of course.

  During quiet times Elizabeth created and then memorized lines in her head, lines that grew into stanzas and occasionally into entire (very short) poems. Mayhap in some distant future, she would pen her own romances.

  Prophecy or daydream?

  Glastonbury's bells began ringing Vespers. Time to depart. Elizabeth sensed Harry behind her. As she silently did at the end of each visit, she thanked Arthur and his queen and their court for having enriched her minutes, hours, days and years.

  I will return in May, when the apple trees are weighed down with their blossoms, she silently promised. Until then, bless me and my family. And tomorrow's journey.

  Which would end in London and a most welcome reunion.

  Chapter 3

  London

  With the passing of the seasons thoughts of Matthew Hart, once omnipresent, seldom troubled Dame Margery Watson, wife to London's most prosperous goldsmith and sometime mayor. For many months following Lord Hart's treachery, Margery had incessantly relived their last moments while her sleeping husband groaned and twitched beside her. When it was Matthew Hart she was supposed to be nestled against, his strong arms that enfolded her, his warrior's chest upon which she rested her cheek. How foolish she'd been, believing she might control her destiny—that she need not be wife of an old man she loathed, but leman to the knight she loved.

  Most unendurable were Simon Crull's marital demands, infrequent though they were. With her husband fumbling atop her, she would drift away from the business at hand, and then, no matter how long it had been since she'd given a thought to the traitor, Matthew Hart would rise before her. Her faerie knight; the golden knight of whom she'd once dreamed, beckoning to her under a summer moon. Her mind would fill with bittersweet memories of their lovemaking. When she had lost herself in their passion, when she was certain she would die if she could not be filled with him, when their conjoining seemed her sole reason for existing.

  Afterward, Crull rolled back to his side of the bed and Margery felt such an aching loneliness, as if she were a body untethered from its soul, a member of the walking dead, whom parents would describe to frighten their wayward children.

  How could you have so betrayed me? She silently questioned her lover. But there was no answer, not the first time she asked, nor the thousandth. Other than that knights were treacherous, as her stepbrother, Thurold, ever claimed. And Thurold was right. Lords were responsible for all the world's ills. Particularly Matthew Hart.

  Simon Crull, recently widowed and ambitious, had tricked Margery into marrying him. That much, for certes, she knew.

  "You are a fugitive bondwoman, Margery Watson," he had asserted, waving a parchment in front of her, a parchment she could not read, which supposedly affirmed her status. "I will have you thrown in Newgate if you refuse to marry me."

  A lie, of course, as she'd discovered.

  Too late.

  Matthew had been visiting the Hart demesne in Cumbria, but following Simon Crull's proposal—or more correctly, his threat—she'd had a missive penned imploring her beloved to immediately return. 'Our future depends upon it.'

  She'd given the letter to Harry Hart, who was residing nearby at Hart's Place.

  "I will send a messenger immediately," Harry had assured her. A hard week's ride, but that would give Matthew time to rescue her.

  After that, events were a blur. Even on her wedding day, Margery had expected her champion to come galloping down Paternoster Lane, his stallion's hooves clattering upon the cobblestones, to sweep her up and away from the church steps and her marriage.

  Matthew Hart had promised. And he had lied.

  As his kind always did. No need to look further than her and Thurold's lord, Lawrence Ravenne, who had been responsible for murdering their mother during the time of the Death. Cutting Alice Watson down on the streets of Ravennesfield as if she were of no more consequence than a mongrel dog.

  From childhood, Thurold had warned Margery never to trust those with noble blood. But noble blood coursed through her veins as well as common, which had a way of confusing her allegiances. And in that confusion she'd allowed herself to be seduced by a handsome face and winsome manner.

  As had Alice.

  The pattern had repeated itself. Conceived by a knight who abandoned her mother; deceived by a knight who abandoned HER.

  For years, Margery had simultaneously hated Matthew Hart and mourned him as one dead. For Matthew had disappeared from her life as surely as if he'd been swept away by war or plague or misfortune. As if his smile and his laughter, the thousand and one things about him that had made her pulse quicken or her heart soften had been no more than a conjurer's trick.

  There had been times, particularly in the early years, when she had deluded herself that Matthew might still care for her, that his absence bespoke hurt rather than indifference. As proof she'd concocted an elaborate story around Harry Hart's frequent appearances at the Shop of the Unicorn, where he would purchase some exquisite piece of jewelry or lavishly cast reliquary. Harry looked so much like Matthew and he was always so kind that Margery sometimes pretended his older brother had sent him, in the manner of a royal spy, to pen elaborate reports about every detail of her life.

  But Margery could not forever delude herself with such confabulations, particularly not after Master Goldsmith Nicholas Norlong returned from the Bordelais court bearing months of gossip, including details of Matthew and Desiderata Cecy's affair. After the goldsmith's re-telling, she had tormented herself with visions of the pair lying together in darkened chambers, Matthew's hands upon that creature's alabaster flesh, imagined him whispering to her the same endearments he had to Margery, imagined plump pillows and heady perfumes and a love bed where Matthew Hart would
betray Margery night after night.

  Still, as months crawled into years, she believed that the madness of love had been tamed. That she had shuttered her heart as completely as the apprentices shuttered the Shop at the end of the day. Margery imagined the ritual—wooden shutters down from the top, up from the bottom, secured left and right. Shuttered as securely as was her heart. Top, bottom, left and right. Locked and bolted. Forever secure. Invulnerable.

  I was so very young then, Margery reasoned, whereas now she was a seasoned matron of twenty-five. With age she'd come to accept, even embrace, her fate, putting aside childish things the same way she'd buried in the bottom of a clothing chest the wooden robin Matt had brought her back from the Poitiers campaign. She had once considered the little robin with its scarlet splash of a breast to be a talisman, a symbol of her and Matthew's love. She'd worn it everywhere, hidden in the tuck of a sleeve or in her bodice.

  No longer.

  One of these days, Margery promised herself, I'll dig up the bloody thing and burn it.

  * * *

  Margery had learned to manage the Shop of the Unicorn's household in such a fashion that, had her spouse been disposed to dispense compliments, he would have found much to praise. In addition to Orabel, her friend and maid of many years, Margery depended on Master Walter the Steward for guidance. Deliberate, even-tempered and with a hawk's eye for detail, Master Walter dealt as easily with a disgruntled tradesman as he did with wine that was deemed to be too oily, too moldy or too tart. Though Master Walter oversaw her household accounts, Margery made all the entries herself—that was how she'd tricked Simon into granting her permission to learn to read—and paid all related debts. She personally interviewed and hired every servant, recording next to their names such pertinent information as the identities of parents and other relatives, previous houses of employment, and place of birth.

  As if you couldn't lie, Margery often thought, while methodically entering each notation in her precise script. She certainly had.

  Though it did ME no good. But someday, she assured herself, I will be rid of Simon Crull.

  If the courts would not grant her relief, then surely death would for she reckoned her husband was as ancient as the hills. Or at least he looked to be.

  Overall, Margery's life fit into a routine which could best be described as comfortable: first, morning mass followed by daily shopping at Cheapside. She knew the price of everything—a gallon of the best Gascon wine sold for no more than fourpence; a gallon of Rhenish for eight. Big loaves of bread, arriving from Stratford, could be purchased for a penny apiece. She knew which merchants to favor, which cheated and were to be avoided.

  Upon returning from the market to the already bustling Shop, Margery would retreat to the private quarters where she consulted with Cook about the day's menu and inspected all the kitchen utensils and pots, making sure everything was scoured, washed and cleaned. Then she supervised the chambermaids, already busy sweeping and cleaning various entrances, dusting footstools and shaking out bench cloths and coverings.

  Quite competently, she thought, though Simon invariably lectured her on her shortcomings.

  "You let them take advantage... You allow them to play unlawful games which reflect poorly upon me... You feed them too well. Do you think I have the purse of King Edward when I am but a humble merchant?"

  In addition, he took great interest in her maids' speech, condemning them for their unseemly use of such vulgarities as "cunt" and "ass," enunciating each word with exaggerated clarity even as he condemned it.

  "Cunt, ass, fuck, bugger... such are not fit utterances for women of proper virtue," Crull said in that sonorous voice so at odds with his appearance, that voice she so despised. "Their coarseness brings disrepute upon my position and I'll not tolerate it."

  Margery nodded docilely, keeping her face a bland mask, though in her opinion her tiny little husband with his tiny little hands and slack belly that spilled over his belt whenever he bent over to remove the tiny little slippers from his tiny little feet, was far more titillated than offended.

  In the afternoons, Margery and Orabel generally retreated to the backside where they gathered herbs, spices and flowers for her potions or to flavor Cook's dishes. To be followed by the closing of the Shop, supper and attendant routines, the ringing of St. Martin's le Grand's bell announcing curfew, and bedtime.

  All to be repeated the next day.

  Such was Margery Watson's life. She did not complain. For what would have been her lot in Ravennesfield, decimated as it had been by the Death? Or, with Matthew Hart, whose promises had proven as false as his love?

  Margery's favorite times were when Crull was away tending to business, the details of which he never shared, Saint Eligius be praised.

  "You are too stupid to understand matters of state," he would say, as if she had asked! What cared she for the doings of king and court and capital city?

  This October day, Margery left the household in Master Walter's care while she and Orabel strolled to Tower Hill where the larger household garden was located.

  "Remember when you first arrived at the Shop?" Orabel asked, limping beside her. London's sky was a wooly grey, blending the smoke from hundreds of chimneys with the bleak pall of afternoon clouds. "What a sight you were. Eyes big as bowls and trembling as if ye had the ague."

  Margery nodded. "London seemed so huge, so overwhelming." She shrugged. "'Tis hard to remember..." Indeed. Now the city, from its ragstone walls stretching in a jagged arc east from the Tower to the Fleet Ditch west of St. Paul's, was as familiar as had once been Ravennesfield. She knew the streets where armorers and brasiers, blacksmiths and boyers, brewers, butchers, carpenters and cutlers plied their trades. She could identify the coats of arms of all the guilds and had a nodding acquaintance with each of the city's twenty-four aldermen. She was aware that prostitutes generally congregated in Slut's Hole, Gropecunt Lane and Codpiece Alley, and that the richest lords, including the Hart family, preferred Holborn or the Strand.

  "...look how God has favored you now that ye be the wife of an alderman," Orabel was saying.

  "Aye, God is too good," Margery said sarcastically and pointedly changed the subject. "Should we plant peas and beans today?"

  They had entered one of the garden paths. In the near distance rose the Tower of London's walls and beyond the White Tower itself, beautiful and forbidding against the glowering sky broken by circling, crying seagulls.

  "And what think you about transplanting that last row of cabbages?"

  Once working the Crull plot, Margery went through the familiar tasks by rote, only half listening to Orabel's amiable chatter. Something seemed off kilter but she could not think what. She pulled her cloak closer against the day's increasing chill. Perhaps it was because she was carrying her first child, and pregnancy had a way of stirring strange humors in a woman. Aye, that must account for the abrupt shifting of her moods, the waywardness of thoughts that seemed to meander as aimlessly as London's alleyways.

  On the way back to the Shop, Orabel stopped and faced her. "Ye've been quiet all the day, Maggie-dear. What is amiss?"

  She shook her head. "I just feel as if something is changing, something I do not understand. And I feel so... untethered..."

  "Do not fret about your babe," Orabel said, incorrectly guessing her concern. "With any luck, that old bastard will be dead afore it is born and ye'll be able to do as ye please."

  "You've predicted that since my wedding night," Margery said, smiling tightly. "I think I must consult a more accurate soothsayer."

  Orabel chuckled. "No need, Maggie-dear. 'Tis just a matter of time afore ye find that I am right. After all, the old bastard canna live forever."

  "Aye," Margery agreed. Though sometimes it felt as if he would.

  * * *

  When Margery and Matthew had lain, naked limbs entwined, in the huge canopied bed at Hart's Place, they'd speculated, as lovers sometimes do, about the manner in which fate had drawn them together
. For how else to explain the intersection of a lad whose family possessed holdings the length of England with that of a half-peasant girl tucked away in an isolated part of East Anglia? 'Twas true that Matthew's sister was being wed to Margery's lord Ravenne at the time of their initial meeting and Ravennesfield was part of the Ravenne holdings. But still, when plague was ravaging the kingdom the way locusts ravage a countryside, what conjunction of stars had aligned to declare, in effect, "Here is where it will begin."? Throughout their lives, no matter how long the separation, how unlikely the circumstances, Margery and Matthew somehow always found themselves reunited.

  Sheltered in their elegant cocoon swathed with the red, gold and white of the Hart colors and the Hart insignia, sated with lovemaking, Margery speculated on the secrets their charts might reveal.

  "Just so long as they do not tell us that we be star-crossed," Matthew said, kissing the top of her head.

  "Like Tristan and Isolde."

  "Or Lancelot and Guinevere." He smiled, thinking of his sister, Elizabeth, and her fondness for such tales. And then they laughed and turned their conversation to other matters.

  Had either Margery or Matthew thought to consult their horoscopes in this month of October 1367 they would have been forewarned that the stars had indeed aligned to bring the lovers, star-crossed or not, together yet again.

  * * *

  Following Sunday mass at St. Paul's, everyone in the Crull household, save for its master, headed for Newgate.

  "I am off to Charing Cross," Simon Crull said to Margery, glowering as if she were the one responsible for the construction delays at the Charing Cross mansion, delays which had drained his time, energy and the Shop's accounts.

  Rather than respond, Margery merely turned away to follow Orabel and the others to Smithfield, which lay beyond London's ragged walls.