Tom continued, ‘Sir Jon believes certain information has come into the king’s possession through very devious means. He will be with you again tomorrow. Possibly even today, if he is able to make sufficient haste.’
‘I pray it is today, Master Kymbe, for I need him very much.’ Yes, she did need Jon Welles, and never more than at this moment. She could sense his honest concern for her in the words he had expressed to Tom. Oh, how she needed to put matters right between them. And she would. She would.
Tom felt awkward. ‘I fear I have something else to convey to you, my lady. I am to tell you that a certain Ralph Scrope has been sent to Wyberton village.’
Her heart plunged. Not Ralph again! Why had she ever smiled at him? She had definitely been a child then, seeing only on the surface, carried along by the feelings that took her towards womanhood. Smiling at Ralph Scrope had produced such ruinous and extended consequences. . . .
Tom watched her face. ‘I was given a description of him, and on my way here with my aunt I rode ahead to the village to see if there had indeed been anyone seen matching the information. He is there now, and by his accent is believed to be from the north. And he is consorting with Lucy Talby, and stays with her and her sister Judith in the cottage where the Talbys have always lived.’
‘Fowls of the same foulness, Master Kymbe.’
‘This Scrope is known to you?’
‘He claims to be my husband, but he is not. All he has ever been is a thorn in my side.’ She looked at him. ‘Do you stay here now, Master Kymbe? Or return to Friskney?’
‘Sir Jon instructs me to remain with you until his return.’
She gazed at him, and then drew a heavy breath. ‘Well, I came out here to ride and then perhaps take a little walk, and that is what I shall do.’ She moved her palfrey on again.
They reached a point where there were willows and bushes ahead, crowding the sides of the causeway and rustling pleasantly as a light breeze crept up. Cicely reined in again. ‘I will walk now, Master Kymbe. If you please?’
He dismounted and came to assist her, lifting her down easily and being as sure as Jon had been that she was steady on her feet. ‘Do you wish to be alone, my lady?’
‘Yes.’
‘Please do not leave the causeway. I know there are inviting paths that lead down to seemingly solid ground, but marshes are treacherous. The eye is deceived.’ He smiled. It was a reassuring smile. Everything about him was comforting.
‘I will be careful, sir.’
Mary glanced around uneasily. ‘I do not like it here. Lights are seen at night, will-o’-the-wisp, jack-o’-lantern, and strange noises are heard. Wails and howls.’
Tom frowned. ‘Jesu, Mary, there is no cause to say such things now, in broad daylight. Do you wish to frighten my lady?’
‘I am not frightened, Master Kymbe,’ Cicely said, ‘merely curious. I have never seen will-o’-the-wisp.’
‘Nor will you now, my lady, for it is daylight,’ he answered firmly, still annoyed with his sister.
‘I do realize that.’ With a smile, Cicely turned to commence her little walk. No, her little waddle, for to be sure she possessed no grace at the moment. It was tiring carrying her child now, and she wished it to come into the world, a contented, healthy baby. She rested a loving hand against her swollen belly. Never would she regret this. Never. Because her love for Richard was too great.
‘I wish you were walking with me now,’ she whispered to him. He did not respond, but she knew he could hear. He was part of her. At all times.
The willows whispered gently, their leaves sometimes white, sometimes green as the little breeze played through them. Then she came upon one of the inviting paths of which Tom had warned. It did indeed look safe, and it led down to what was clearly firm ground, because there were more bushes and at least one small tree. A breeze had risen, and a pale flutter caught her eye among some of the bushes a little further out. What was it? A seagull? No, for it was the wrong shape. Much longer. And it was made of cloth.
But then she realized, by its form, length and width, what the cloth could well be. She had to go closer to see. Ignoring Tom’s advice, she went down the path and on to the marsh. As she drew near, she proved right, for it was a baby’s swaddling cloth, tied to a stick, like a streamer to a pole. As she pushed through the bushes towards it, she realized the stick had been plunged into a small mound that looked like a tiny grave. Someone had buried a newborn baby in this place? But why? Then she saw that on the branches all around there were trinkets and spells, ribbons and wooden images. All manner of sorcery. Cold dread settled over her, and she felt as if the breath were being sucked from her.
The breeze rustled the bushes and seagulls mewed overheard, so that she was only vaguely aware of Tom shouting to her from the causeway, but she was too absorbed in what she saw to take notice anyway. She moved even closer, and only then observed the lovers on the ground, engaged upon violent congress. They were not just any lovers, for one was Ralph Scrope, and the other Lucy Talby. Their lovemaking was passionate to the point of being frenzied, with Ralph driving in so hard and fast that his pale backside moved up and down like bellows. Lucy was spread beneath him, her wide-parted thighs fully revealed as she writhed and moaned, clawing at his back as if she would rip him into shreds.
Tom called again, much closer now, and Cicely glanced around to see he had ridden to the path and was dismounting to commence a hurried descent of the path. Mary waited anxiously on the causeway with the horses.
At last the lovers realized they were no longer alone, and scrambled apart as if scalded. Ralph hopped about, shoving his dwindling member out of sight and struggling to straighten his clothes. He was comely enough, with brown hair and hazel eyes, and Cicely had once found him pleasing. No more.
Lucy raised herself to a sitting position. She was naked to the waist, her heavy breasts thrusting forward. Her gown was still pulled up around her hips, and she made no attempt to close her thighs or hide her crotch. Her gloating expression spoke an entire book. Your husband had me like this, my fine lady, so many times that he wore his own path. And now your enemy fucks me as well.
Cicely recoiled as the silent words came clearly into her head, as if directed there. She turned deliberately to Ralph. ‘In whose pay are you this time? I should beware, Mistress Talby, for this man changes allegiance as easily as he probably does his whores.’
‘What should I care of his allegiance?’ Lucy replied, ‘It is his cock I am interested in.’ The witch got up, with only a passing gesture of making herself presentable.
Ralph took a threatening step forward towards Cicely. ‘You are my wife, not the wife of Sir Jon Welles, and I will claim you yet! The king will find in my favour!’
‘I do not think so, sir. If you think that, you do not know your latest king very well.’
‘I will have you yet!’
‘No, sir, you and I were never married, nor even handfast or linked in any way, except in your imagination. You forged Richard’s signature and appended his seal. You, sir.’
His eyes gave his guilt away, but he remained defiant. ‘It was not in your imagination that you got yourself with child! Who by? I think I know, for he wore a crown, did he not? I saw how you looked at him, even while you pretended to love his son!’
Cicely was dismayed. ‘You are mad,’ she whispered.
Ralph smiled. ‘The present wearer of that crown suspects it, my lady. No, he more than merely suspects it, he is convinced of it.’
‘Because you told him?’
‘Yes, I told him, but he suspected it already.’
She gave no outward sign of the sudden panic that ran riot through her veins. ‘You cannot have told him anything for a fact, sir, and so you will have to explain your falsehoods. This child is that of Sir Jon Welles, as I think King Henry knows well enough. I did not lie with my uncle, I lay with King Henry’s uncle, although I confess King Richard was a very attractive man. Hard to resist, I would imagine. Unlike yo
u, Ralph Scrope. You I could resist until doomsday itself.’
Ralph stepped forward, a hand raised to hit her, but then he saw Tom running towards them, and stepped back warily, reaching for his dagger. But his belt still lay on the ground where he had discarded it.
Even as he thought of bending for it, Tom was there, his own dagger weighed in his palm. He drew Cicely to safety behind him. ‘Are you all right, my lady?’
‘Yes.’
Tom returned his attention to Ralph. ‘Scrope, you have threatened Lady Welles, and intended to subject her to violence. I will see that Sir Jon is informed. I do not doubt he will complain to his nephew the king of your dishonourable conduct.’
Ralph went pale. ‘I did not threaten Lady Welles.’
‘I saw your raised hand about to strike her.’ Tom continued to weigh the dagger threateningly in his palm.
‘You heard and saw nothing!’
In answer Tom suddenly hurled the dagger at Ralph’s right foot. It found its mark. He screamed and fell down, clutching at his shattered, bleeding instep, not daring to remove the dagger because the blade had passed right through to pierce the ground.
As Ralph’s agonized cries and sobs continued, Lucy looked steadily at Tom. ‘How very accurate your aim, Master Kymbe, but you are otherwise singularly unobservant.’
‘Unobservant?’
She nodded at the little mound, and the swaddling band. ‘What do you think, Master Kymbe?’ She smiled coldly.
His face changed and he stumbled back a step. Cicely knew instantly that the swaddling band had been prepared for his child. Lucy Talby had overlooked Felice de Burgh and caused the baby to be born dead!
Cicely put a steadying hand on his arm. ‘Have a care, Master Kymbe, for she wants you to lose control. There is something, I know not what, that she can do with your anger.’ She turned to Lucy. ‘I intend to tell my husband about this, and it will not be just my word but Master Kymbe’s as well. And my maid’s.’ She indicated Mary, still waiting with the horses on the causeway. ‘My lord has more than repaid any debt he once owed to your father, and will no longer tolerate you on his lands.’
‘Oh, how clever you think you are. Sir Jon is not here, and when he does return, you will not be here either. Or the child that is not his anyway.’
Tom glanced quickly at Cicely.
Lucy spoke again. ‘I have overlooked once, my lady, and can overlook again,’ she said softly, fixing her gaze upon Cicely’s belly.
Tom caught Cicely and turned her swiftly away so that her back was to the witch, then he shoved Lucy so violently that she fell back. He pinned her there, first removing one of her shoes and then the other. He hurled both as far into the marsh as he could, in opposite directions. Then he took Ralph’s dagger from the belt on the ground and set about Lucy’s hair, carving and cutting indiscriminately until there were flaxen tresses all around. ‘There! Like Samson, you are weakened!’ he cried.
She tried to fend him off, but he was so empowered by grief and bitterness that nothing could stop him. At last he scrambled away from her, the look in his eyes warning that killing her was well within his capability. ‘Now, walk towards the Witham, and keep walking.’
‘Without my shoes?’ Her glance moved nervously to the shifting marsh, where there was so little firm ground and so much hidden water. ‘And to the Witham?’
‘Certes, without your shoes, madam. The marsh will be so soft and welcoming beneath your dainty feet. And so will the tide.’
Ralph was appalled. ‘We will drown!’
‘Well, now, there is a pleasant thought. May some vile serpent devour you both. Now, go!’ He reached over to pluck his dagger roughly from Ralph’s foot, causing shrieks that echoed across the open landscape.
Cicely watched in astonishment, for it was clear that Tom Kymbe, so calm and agreeable on the outside, was capable of great violence. She knew he was very close indeed to killing these two. Maybe he would have done so had she not been there to witness.
He wiped his dagger on the grass and then straightened. ‘Go,’ he said again. ‘Now! Before I forget my lady is present!’
As one they clambered away, treading from the firm ground into the less certain surface of the waiting marsh, east, towards the river. Ralph cried out time and again because of the terrible wound to his foot, but Cicely felt no sympathy. Part of her wished Tom had so forgotten himself sufficiently to rid the world—and Cicely Plantagenet—of two such banes. They would not get as far as the river, let alone be able to enter it. Tom Kymbe knew that, and so did they.
Tom went beyond the bushes, to where the lovers’ mounts had been concealed, and led them past Cicely toward the path, then he slapped them both hard on the rump. They galloped towards the causeway, struggled up it and then set off for their stables, their tails high.
Tom was suddenly overcome and returned to kick the little mound into oblivion. There was nothing beneath it. Tears shone in his eyes as he broke the stick in half, but as he held the swaddling cloth itself, a sudden gust of wind snatched it from him, and swept it high overhead. It flapped and twisted, and then vanished against the dazzle of the sun. Neither he nor Cicely saw where it landed.
She went to him and put a hand on his forearm again. ‘Tom—Master Kymbe—I share your sorrow. Truly I do.’
‘You have not lost a child, my lady,’ he said, and then immediately regretted. ‘Forget I spoke. I was not thinking. Please, my lady.’ There was superstition in his eyes. A dread of having tempted providence.
‘I did not hear you say anything, Master Kymbe. I will commend you to my husband, for he should know how you came to my aid. He will be grateful.’
‘I do not need his gratitude, my lady, for it was you I protected.’ He managed a smile. ‘Forgive me again, for it is not my habit to weep in front of ladies.’
‘You are grief-stricken, and if you weep, it is a sign of your strength, not your weakness.’
‘You have a way with words, my lady.’
‘I am my uncle’s niece, sir.’
But as they rode back to the castle, Cicely felt a sudden sharp pain lance through her belly. A gasp was wrenched from her, and she bent forward. ‘Sweet God . . . !’ Had she been overlooked after all? Had Lucy Talby managed to cast her vile sorcery upon Lady Welles?
In a moment Tom had dismounted, lifted her across from her palfrey to his much larger horse, remounted, and put an arm firmly around her. ‘I will see you safely home, my lady.’
She clasped her arms around herself, biting her lip as another jab of pain plunged through her. ‘Be quick, Master Kymbe, for I think my baby is impatient!’
He kicked his heels and urged the horse into a canter, leaving Mary to lead Cicely’s palfrey. The maid glanced back across the marsh, feeling nothing for Ralph Scrope and Lucy Talby, and then she rode slowly on towards the castle.
As Tom and Cicely clattered into the courtyard, they found it filled with Jon’s returned cavalcade. He had just dismounted, and was talking to Ned. Both men turned as Tom’s horse appeared.
Jon saw Cicely, and the look of urgency on Tom’s face. He came to quickly raise his arms for her to slip down into them. She was weeping with the pain, and could hardly stand, so he swept her from her feet and carried her up the steps, calling out for assistance.
Cicely clung to him, her arms so tight around his neck that she must almost have felt like a vice. ‘Why were you away so long, Jon? I missed you so.’
‘I am here now, sweetheart.’
‘I am frightened.’
‘At this moment, I am frightened for you,’ he replied.
Chapter Twenty
Cicely’s agony had not abated, but became far worse as the hours passed. Worse to the point of being insupportable. So much pain, so much demand, so much draining of her strength. It was close to midnight, still Valentine’s Day, and she seemed no closer to giving birth than she had at the outset. The travails racked her body, and she was weak of them, sometimes crying—sometimes beyond crying.
The room was stifling. A great fire roared in the hearth and was continually stoked to make it blaze the more, for there had to be heat when a woman was in labour. Moths fluttered around the candles, and the windows were tightly closed and packed against draughts, to retain as much heat as possible. All knots, even those tying the bed hangings, had been undone, for it was feared such things could prevent the child’s entry to the world.
A heavy birthing chair had been dragged before the fire in readiness. It was an ugly, cumbersome thing, with a horseshoe-shaped seat, through which the baby should be born. If it was ever born.
Women waited, needed to assist at such a time. They were from within the castle, but Cicely knew they saw only Losecoat Field when they looked at her. She did not want them to touch her, but now feared Katherine Kymbe could not manage such a difficult birth alone.
Katherine knew her work well, but even she was becoming concerned by the obstinacy of the child. She examined Cicely again, running knowing fingertips over her swollen belly and then inspecting between her legs. ‘This is no enlarging yet,’ she muttered. ‘I do not understand. I should see the child’s head by now.’
‘What is wrong? Is something wrong?’ Cicely cried, fresh panic surging through her. Then her breath caught with the agony of another contraction of what felt like every muscle she possessed. The pain did not simply grip her, it galloped over her like a hundred horses, all with nails for hooves.
She closed her eyes to stem the hot tears that stung her with their salt wretchedness, but then she felt Richard’s fingers linking gently through hers. She gripped him as tightly as she could. ‘You did this to me! You did! I think I hate you for it!’ she cried aloud, drawing astonished attention.
‘You love me too much to hate me, sweetheart.’
She began to sob with the cruel pain. How did some women bear ten or more children? Just one should have warned them to keep away from men!
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