“Josselin had never told me of this acquaintance with your mother, particularly having learned of her part in defrauding me of Landerneau. He thought that, as we would never meet, it was unnecessary to reveal the association, but finding her with the queen he confessed all to me, and it was then I decided to wreak my revenge upon that woman. I am no saint, Blanchette, as you can see.”
“You heard me, didn’t you?” Blanchette said softly. “You heard me calling to you for help! I know you did!”
“What?” Mairin looked somewhat startled by the intensity in the girl’s voice.
“Melaine said you had the gift,” was Blanchette’s reply. “She said you could hear the voices on the wind, and that if I called to you, you would hear me because we are sisters.”
“And why did you want my help, Blanchette?” Mairin was quite fascinated, for she remembered how quite unbidden her sudden knowledge of her half-sister had come into her conscious mind. Could the girl reach out to her?
“Hugo died of measles, and when he did I realized that, although I would have wed with him, I really did not want to marry,” said Blanchette. “All of my life I have found myself drawn to the church. I have always been happiest in prayer, but when I spoke on it to mother once she told me that I was being foolish. She pointed out to me how lucky I was to be joining the Montgomerie family who are important and rich.
“Actually, they have always frightened me, for they are big, loud people, and they never speak softly when they can argue and shout. I was sent to them when I was just four, and the betrothal agreement was settled. Hugo was five then. He had three elder brothers, and a sister, Isabelle, who was my age at the time. His mother was always with child. There was a new little one every year until Hugo’s mother died in childbirth with a stillborn son. I was nine that year. My lord de Montgomerie rewed almost immediately, and the new wife took up where the old had left off, but she was a poor frail creature who died within two year’s time, having not been able to successfully produce a living child, though she lost three. Again Hugo’s father remarried, but this time, he chose a big healthy woman much like his first wife. She was a widow with six children of her own, and she brought them all to live at the castle which made it even more crowded and noisy. The lady Yvonne gave my lord Montgomerie a tenpound infant son in less than a year of marriage.” Blanchette shuddered nervously with her memories, and sipped for a moment on her wine before continuing her tale. “Then a measles epidemic swept the castle. Hugo, Isabelle, and three of the lady Yvonne’s children all died of it. I, and several of the others who had been ill, survived.
“When finally everything was back to normal, the lord de Montgomerie realized that with Hugo dead, I was no longer bound to his family. He was ready to send me back to Landerneau, for he had no more sons not already betrothed, and I was just another mouth to feed. Then the lady Yvonne suggested that I be matched with her second son, Gilles, who had not yet been betrothed. It was no wonder. He was a horrible boy whose head was too big for his body. He was always trying to catch girls alone. I told the lady Yvonne that, although I would have honored the marriage agreement that my mother had made for me with Hugo de Montgomerie when we were children, since I was free of that entanglement I preferred to dedicate my life to God and enter a convent. She beat me, and locked me in a tower room with only bread and water for weeks. She said I would stay there until I changed my mind. Each day she would come to demand my consent to a match between her son and me. Each day I refused, and was beaten for that refusal. Finally after several weeks I was released, but everyone in the castle treated me like a pariah.
“It was then, Mairin, that I remembered what Melaine had told me about you before I left Landerneau. That you had a gift, and were a magical creature, perhaps even an enchantress like the great sorcerer Merlin’s lover, Viviane. I tried to reach out to you, to tell you of my plight, and of how very much I wanted to give myself to God. I thought surely God could not punish me for seeking the only aid I knew available to me. I felt that if I was wrong, God would show me the error of my ways, but, instead, there came word from the head of the de Montgomerie family, and from Queen Matilda herself, that I was to be sent to the queen at Caen. That I was to be allowed to dedicate my life to the church.
“I knew then that you had heard me. That you understood, and that you had helped me. The queen told me that my mother was dead. She gave me the first official word I had ever had of you, and she told me that you knew of my desire to give myself to God. She said that you had offered, out of pure generosity, to dower me into the convent of my choice. Then she asked me if I should like to be received into her very own Abbey of the Holy Trinity with her own little daughter, Cecily. Oh, Mairin! I could not remember ever having been so happy! The little princess and I were to have gone into the convent this past summer, but she has been ill, and so the queen decided to wait until next summer to send us.
“When I learned that, I asked the queen if I might be allowed to come to England to meet you. I have no other close relatives, for our father’s family is gone, and I never knew my mother’s family except for one funny old bishop who died years ago. I hope you are not angry with me for coming.”
“Nay,” said Mairin quietly. “I do not think there is anything you might do, Blanchette, that would anger me.” She reached out and patted her half-sister’s hand, thinking all the while how strange it was that this poor little waif had reached out to someone she had not known at all, could not have been certain was still alive. “When you called out to me,” she said to the girl, “did you not consider the possibility that I might be dead?”
“Oh, no! I knew that you were alive!”
“How?” demanded Mairin.
Blanchette shrugged. “I just knew,” she said.
Mairin smiled. “It is possible,” she said, “that you also have a gift of sorts, little sister.”
“Nay!” came the quick denial. “It would not be proper and godly for me to have such ability.”
Mairin could not help but chuckle at her sister’s reply. The child considered it perfectly proper to reach out with her mind to Mairin, but rejected the idea that in being able to do so she might have that same gift that allowed her elder sister to hear her. This, however, was not the time to argue such fine points with Blanchette, whom Mairin suspected as being woefully ill-educated. Growing up as one of a litter of many children in a large Norman castle, she knew, did not guarantee formal knowledge. There was time to learn all she needed to know though, and so for now she would simply make the girl feel welcome.
“I am glad you are here at Aelfleah, Blanchette, my sister,” she said. “This is where I grew up after I left Landerneau, and this lady is the mother who raised me.” Mairin reached out and took Eada’s hand as she approached her daughter’s chair. She had heard most of Blanchette’s story. “This is the lady Eada. Mother, how would you have Blanchette address you?”
“I would have her call me mother as do you and Josselin,” came the reply. “Poor child! Your life has not been an easy one, has it? Well, you are safe in the bosom of your real family now, and we shall try to make you happy while you are with us.” She looked down at Mairin and said pointedly, “Have I not been tellng you how fortunate you are to be so surrounded with love, my daughter? And here is poor Blanchette who has been so alone all of her young life.”
A small smile played at the corners of Mairin’s mouth. Eada was hardly being subtle, but suddenly Mairin began to wonder if perhaps her mother were not right. Perhaps she should forgive Josselin. Then she pushed the thought from her head, saying to her sister, “Would it please you to call the lady Eada mother?”
“Ohh, yes!” Blanchette said happily, and once more tears threatened to overflow her lovely soft blue eyes.
“What of me?” said Josselin, joining them. “Will you not introduce me to your sister, enchantress, or are you still too angry at me to do so?”
“My lord husband, Josselin de Combourg,” said Mairin without formality.
Josselin’s green-gold eyes twinkled with mischief. “My lady Blanchette,” he said warmly, taking the girl’s dainty hand and raising it to his lips to kiss. “I bid you welcome to Aelfleah.”
“My lord,” said Blanchette in return, removing her hand from his grasp with an expertise that caused Mairin to stifle a giggle.
Regaining control of her emotions, Mairin called to Dagda to come and meet Blanchette. The big man joined the family grouping, and looked down into the girl’s eyes. She returned his gaze shyly, but she did not flinch from his piercing gaze. Finally, Dagda smiled.
“I see much of your father in you, my lady Blanchette,” he said approvingly in his deep booming voice.
Blanchette smiled for the first time, and Mairin thought how very, very pretty she was. “Oh,” she said, “you could not have said a nicer thing to me, Dagda! You knew my father, did you not? Please tell me about him.”
“I will be happy to tell you all I know of Ciaran St. Ronan, child,” said Dagda, “but I find I am growing powerfully hungry. The supper hour is at hand, and I am not a good storyteller on an empty belly.” He looked at Blanchette with seemingly critical eyes. “You look as if you could use some good meals,” he said. “Our good Aelfleah food will soon fatten you up.”
“Come, child, I will show you where to wash away the dust of your travels,” said Eada. “We have prepared my son’s old room for you. Brand would have liked you. He liked all the pretty girls,” and Eada led Blanchette away.
“Well, enchantress, are you sorry that she is come now that she is here?” Josselin demanded of her when they suddenly found themselves alone.
“Nay,” Mairin answered him. “Poor child! She has not had an easy time, has she? Blanche, it appears, could hardly wait to foster her out to the de Montgomeries. How different it would have been for us both had our father only lived. I do not think anyone has ever told that girl she was loved.
“I remember we once discussed Blanche’s intelligence, and decided she had little. Now I know we were right! Imagine giving her baby to my old nurse for safekeeping. Melaine adored me, and although she would never have been so cruel to anyone deliberately, she could not resist whispering to Blanchette of me. Now I wonder if my poor little sister’s desire for the convent is to escape her mother’s sins or atone for them? Or does she have a genuine calling?”
“You will have time over the next six months to find out, Mairin,” he answered her.
“Aye, I will,” she said thoughtfully; and then, “Josselin?”
“Yes, enchantress?” He had taken Blanchette’s place in the chair opposite his wife.
“Josselin, I am sorry for the anger between us,” she said in a rush of words. “My mother has told me over and over again how fortunate I have been in my life, always surrounded by love, and though I heard the words and knew in my heart that she was right, I could not put the anger I felt in my soul from me. I am still not certain I can, and yet seeing little Blanchette today, hearing how lonely her life has been . . . It makes me realize that I do not want to continue fighting with you, my lord.”
“Mairin, I never meant to hurt you,” he said, “and I would never harm William.”
“I know that,” she answered him, and then she sighed deeply. “I do not know why I get so angry. It felt like such a betrayal of me when, in that single instant, you seemed to doubt me. I remembered what had happened before . . . in Byzantium with Basil . . . when he betrayed me.”
“Basil betrayed you?” He had not heard this before. “How? With another woman?”
“With a man,” she answered softly.
“With a man?” Josselin looked stunned.
“The people of Byzantium are different from us in some of their manners and ways,” Mairin said quietly. “They are apt to take lovers of the same sex, and no one thinks it strange. Before my first husband wed with me he had a male lover. His name was Bellisarius, and he was the most famous actor of his time in Constantinople. He murdered Basil, or so they told me. Then there were others who claimed that the two men had committed suicide so they might always be together.
“I was very young when I married Basil. He was a very wonderful man. He was as handsome as I am beautiful. He was educated and kind, and had a marvelous sense of humor. I had a blissful, if brief, life with him, but I came to him a complete innocent. He made certain that I stayed that way, sheltering me tenderly, even as my parents had sheltered me from the world. Imagine my shock at his death, and then the gossip surrounding that death! For some weeks I lost all memory of him and our life together. It was a terrible time. When I did regain my memory, I decided that Basil had never loved me, that he had deliberately and wantonly betrayed me. Later, I came to realize that that was not so. He had loved me, and I was fortunate to have had so tender and thoughtful a first lover. I will never, however, be certain of how Basil died, and that will haunt me all my days.
“I trusted Basil completely, and so I trusted you, Josselin, for is it not a wife’s duty to cleave unto her husband? Your doubts seemed, at the time, an even worse betrayal than Basil’s, for that apparent betrayal threatened my baby more than it threatened me.” She laughed somewhat ruefully. “I have behaved very childishly, and I am not a child any longer as I was when Basil died.”
He understood so much now! Things he had never before comprehended that had seemed mysterious about her. Leaning forward, he reached out and took her two hands in his. “I am not a wildly handsome and clever prince, Mairin. Neither am I a saint. I am but a rough knight, a servant of the king, a simple man. But I am a man who loves you, enchantress, and I will always love you. I may not always understand, and there may be times as we grow older together that I lose patience with you, but I will never stop loving you.” He raised her hands to his lips, and tenderly kissed them, the backs, the palms, the soft skin of her inner wrists. His green-gold eyes met her violet ones in silent pledge.
“Pax, my lord?” she said softly.
“Pax,” he answered her.
Eada, returning to the hall with Blanchette, saw their two heads together, and observed Josselin kissing her daughter’s hands. Mairin sat quietly and unprotesting. There was a smile upon her lips now, a smile that Eada had not seen in the weeks since she had been home. She turned to Blanchette, saying, “I think your coming, child, has worked a miracle, and I thank God for it.”
“There is nothing I would not do for Mairin,” said the young girl fervently. “Oh, Mother Eada, do you think she will love me despite my mother’s behavior?”
“I know my elder daughter,” said Eada, giving Blanchette a small hug about her slender shoulders. “She loves you already, child. Mairin’s temper is pure Celt, but her large heart is also Celt. What she gives she does not give lightly, nor does she take away a gift once given. You have come home at last, Blanchette St. Ronan, and we welcome you to Aelfleah with all our hearts.”
Blanchette could feel her own heart swell with happiness at Eada’s words. She suddenly realized that all of her life she had been seeking a family. Now she had found one in the most unlikely manner. She settled comfortably and happily into life at Aelfleah. Very much in awe of her elder sister, she nonetheless adored Mairin openly. As for her niece and nephew, Maude and William delighted her as the population of children at the de Montgomerie castle had not. Perhaps it was because these two children were her family. Her blood relations. Blanchette found that for the first time in her life she was genuinely content.
“I wonder what her mother would say to see her here with us?” Mairin chuckled to Josselin as they bundled together in bed the night before her birthday.
“Blanche would be envious, I think. She was a mean-spirited woman,” he answered, “but let us not speak on her, enchantress.”
“What shall we speak on then, my lord?” Her voice was teasing as was her manner. Her eyes danced mischievously in the golden light of the single candle by their bed which cast dark shadows upon their fair bodies.
“I should rather n
ot speak at all,” he said with meaning.
“Then what shall we do, my lord?” They both lay on their sides facing one another, propped upon an elbow. “I am at my lord husband’s command.”
Reaching out, he cupped her head in his big hand, and then leaning forward, he kissed her soft lips. “Does this give you ideas, lady?” he said low.
“You must promise me not to bellow lest you wake William,” she replied demurely.
“I do not bellow,” he protested.
“You always say that,” Mairin laughed, “but you do!”
“William won’t know what we’re doing even if he does awaken,” Josselin reasoned.
“And how fortunate that Maude has expressed a desire to be with her aunt Blanchette,” chuckled Mairin.
The hand that had held her head in embrace moved about to caress her face. Gently he rubbed his knuckles against her cheek, down around her chin, and up the other cheek. With a barely audible sigh she pressed against his hand. His fingers played over her lips, and opening her mouth she nibbled at them playfully with sharp little teeth. Their eyes met, and they smiled at each other. Trailing his fingers between her breasts, he pushed her long red-gold hair aside so he might feast his eyes upon those magnificant twin glories. Her nipples hardened beneath his very ardent gaze.
Lying back, Mairin drew her husband’s head down to the valley between her breasts, and breathing deep, he inhaled the faint lilac fragrance she seemed to favor that clung to her skin. He rubbed his cheek against her breasts grumbling as he did, “Will you please get a wet-nurse for William, enchantress? It is extremely unfair that these beauties,” and now he fondled her breasts lovingly, “be the sole possession of a toothless babe unable to appreciate their finer points.” He licked teasingly at a nipple, and almost immediately a pearl of her milk appeared which he appreciatively lapped up.
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