Blood Oath: The Janna Chronicles 1

by Felicity Pulman

  Janna’s lips twitched to hear her mother’s opinion of the apothecary repeated by the midwife. Curiosity prompted her to ask, “And once Fulk is out of the way, what then would you have me do?”

  “Become my assistant,” Aldith answered promptly. “I’m aware that you lack experience so there is much I can teach you, just as I believe that your mother will have taught you much that I do not know. We can learn from each other.”

  Janna hesitated, tempted by Aldith’s offer. It seemed far more genuine than Fulk’s offer to her mother, and its benefits were manifest. Under Aldith’s protection she would find a place and acceptance in the community, as well as gaining the experience she needed. Yet Aldith had been Eadgyth’s rival, and was about to reap the benefits of her death. While her offer might be kindly meant, Janna cautioned herself to stay on guard. Aldith was not off her list of suspects yet.

  Aldith was waiting for her answer. Undecided, Janna wondered what her mother would have advised her to do. She looked down at the midwife’s apron. It was clean and freshly laundered for the occasion, but the kirtle underneath was somewhat grubby and stained. There was her answer—or was it? If Eadgyth had only bothered to explain, the midwife would have understood why cleanliness was so necessary for the health of mothers and their babies. Aldith seemed more than willing to learn—and so was Janna. If sharing their knowledge would benefit the villagers, her offer was surely worth consideration. About to say yes, a further thought stopped Janna. If she accepted, it would tie her to this place just as surely as she’d been tied by her mother and their life here. Was that what she truly wanted?

  “It’s kind of you to think of me, and I thank you,” she said, searching for the words to frame a more gentle refusal than her mother would have done. “Please give me time to think about it, for I know not what the future holds for me. It’s too soon to make plans. Who knows, I may even find someone to wed, and move away from here.”

  It was an attempt to sound light-hearted, but Aldith nodded in immediate understanding. “Eadgyth told me that it was her dearest wish that you would find happiness with a good man.”

  “Why should my mother wish for me what she never knew herself?”

  “I think it’s because she wanted to keep you from making the same mistake that she did,” Aldith said quietly.

  “Did you know my father?” Janna could hardly breathe from excitement.

  Reluctantly, Aldith shook her head. “I never met him,” she admitted. “I only know the very little your mother confided to me when first she came here, swollen with child and needing somewhere to stay.”

  “Where did she come from?”

  Aldith shrugged. “I don’t know. She never said.”

  “Why did she come here? Did she tell you why she chose this place?”

  “She came to see the abbess, I believe. She had little money or jewelry to give in return for shelter, but the abbess did well out of the exchange for the cot you live in was derelict, and the small piece of land beside was not large enough to support a villein and his family. Not only did your mother repair the cot and render that land fruitful, she also paid rent to the abbess in return for that act of charity. Your mother was no beggar, Janna.”

  “Did she ever speak of her family, or her past? Please, please tell me everything you know,” Janna begged.

  “I can’t tell you much. Your mother and I weren’t close, as you know. I gave her shelter while she repaired your cottage, for she had no money to hire a laborer for the task. We exchanged some confidences then, but I think she later regretted even the little she’d told me. And she repaid my kindness by stealing my patients!”

  Janna was silenced by the bitterness in Aldith’s voice. Her mind teemed with the questions she wanted to ask, questions that Aldith probably couldn’t answer. She became aware that Aldith was studying her intently. “You have your father’s eyes,” she observed.

  ‘How can you know that? I thought you’d never met him.”

  “I didn’t. But your mother was a Saxon beauty with her fair hair and gray eyes. You have your mother’s fair hair, but your eyes are dark brown.”

  “Then I must be ugly. I would rather look like my mother than a father I don’t know and who doesn’t want to know me!”

  “I suspect he doesn’t know you even exist.”

  “Did my mother tell you that?” Janna was worried now that she’d utterly misjudged her father.

  “No. From the very little she told me about her circumstances, I gained the impression that your father might be someone wealthy, important. Perhaps too important to wed a woman of no consequence like your mother?”

  “Surely, if my father was wealthy, he could have helped my mother live a better, more comfortable life than she did!” Janna’s anger blew like a straw in the wind as it shifted between her mother and her father. She longed to know the true circumstances of her heritage and her birth.

  “Perhaps he was already betrothed to another and would not—or could not—break off that alliance?” Aldith suggested. “Your mother may well have decided to leave rather than beg for his help when she discovered she was carrying you!” As she noticed Janna’s stricken expression, her voice softened slightly. “Your mother did not hold a grudge against your father, for all of that. In fact, she spoke of him with great love—such a love, I think, that prevented her from taking any other man to her bed thereafter.”

  Janna nodded slowly as she came to understand the truth behind her mother’s lonely life, and her desire for her only daughter to marry and be safe. “My father’s name? Did my mother ever tell you it?” she asked.

  To her utter disappointment, Aldith shook her head. “Your mother kept her secrets, Janna.”

  “From me, as well as from you. And now she’s dead, I’ll never know the truth about my father.” Janna felt her throat clog thick with tears. With a huge effort, she struggled to stay dry-eyed and calm.

  She took Aldith’s hand. “I am grateful to you, more grateful than I can say.”

  “Think over my offer.” Aldith pressed Janna’s hand between her own. Janna felt ashamed of her mother’s past treatment of the midwife, for she believed that the woman was kind, and that she meant to bring comfort. “We’ll talk again,” Aldith promised, and slipped away.

  Head bowed, Janna stayed motionless, thinking over what she’d just learned. Her father was likely highborn, too important to wed her mother. Which meant that by now he would surely have wed someone else, a lady, and he would probably have children of his own. She longed to know more about him. Why had her mother kept his secret, never gone after him, never asked him for anything in spite of the hard times she and Janna had lived through? Pride? Or was it love and the need to protect his good name with his family that had kept her away?

  Aldith had told her she had her father’s brown eyes. She might have inherited more from him than that, Janna thought, for her fair hair and her skill with herbs were the only characteristics she shared with her mother. As well as resembling her father, did she have his temperament too? What sort of man could he be to inspire such love and devotion in proud Eadgyth, and yet abandon her so completely? Janna frowned, rejecting any part of her own nature that could ever be so brutal.

  What would her father say if he knew he had a daughter? Would he welcome her, or was his own family so important to him that he’d deny her and send her away?

  Saddened by her thoughts, Janna walked slowly along the narrow street that led through Berford. It seemed to her that several people turned aside as she passed, or ducked into doorways or down lanes rather than meet her face to face. She looked back to check if her suspicion was true, just in time to see a young boy making the sign of a cross with his fingers, as if to ward off evil. Acting on impulse, Janna made the sign back at him. His eyes widened and he scuttled off. Janna looked after him, feeling troubled and angry that the villagers seemed so against her when her mother had always done her best to help them.

  The priest and his sermons, and the
fact that he would not bury her mother in consecrated ground: that news must be out already. Truly the priest had succeeded in turning her and her mother into outcasts.

  Lost in thought as she was, Janna did not at first pay attention to the slender woman in the long green gown walking ahead of her. It was only when the woman glanced behind her, and their gazes met, that Janna saw who it was. Not bound by any notions of maidenly modesty, she picked up her skirt and raced after her.

  “Mistress Cecily!” she shouted. “Please wait for me!” There was no reason why a highborn tiring lady should pay any attention to her, Janna understood that, but her need to ask questions was greater than her need to worry about propriety. “I want to ask you about my mother,” she called.

  The young woman stopped. Slowly, reluctantly, she turned around. Her face was pale, her eyes red-rimmed as if she’d recently been crying. Janna wondered where Hugh had gone, and if the lady was weeping because of him. She quickly banished that disturbing thought from her mind. She needed all her wits to find out what she could from the last person to see her mother alive.

  “Forgive me.” She bobbed an awkward curtsy. “I called after you because I wanted to thank you again for looking after my mother while she lay dying. I’m trying now to piece together the last hours of her life, so that I may truly understand what happened to her.” The tremor in Janna’s voice was real, and Cecily responded with sympathy.

  “I thought your mother seemed out of sorts once she came into my lady’s bedchamber, but I put it down to the fact that there was a heated argument between her and Master Fulk over the best potion to help Dame Alice. Fulk had prepared a posset, you see, but your mother threw it out and told him to leave the room. Fulk appealed to Dame Alice, but she said he should do what he was told. He was very angry with Eadgyth. He blamed her for everything.” Cecily cast a timid glance at Janna, then modestly lowered her eyes.

  “Did my mother have anything to eat or drink after she arrived at the manor?”

  “Dame Alice offered her a beaker of water. I suppose she thought your mother would be hot and thirsty after her long walk.”

  “That was kind of her.” Janna hesitated, wondering how to phrase the question without offending Cecily. “Did my mother say anything about the water? About its taste?”

  “No. She thanked Dame Alice, and drank it straight away.”

  “Could the water have been—” Janna was going to say “poisoned,” but stopped in time. “Foul? Polluted in some way?”

  “Not at all!” Cecily bristled in indignation. “It was poured from the very jug that Dame Alice herself uses. But your mother became sick soon afterwards.”

  “Who gave the water to my mother?” Janna had visions of Fulk slipping aconite into the beaker, but then remembered that he’d been banished from the bedchamber.

  “I poured the water myself, and brought it to her. She thanked me. She said the water had cooled her. In fact, she soon complained of feeling cold.” Cecily still looked indignant. Janna knew she could not press the matter further.

  “Did my mother take any food or drink before she saw Dame Alice? Could she and the apothecary perhaps have taken some refreshment together?”

  “I doubt it!” Cecily gave a brief snort of laughter at the idea. “There was no love lost between them right from the very beginning. He never wanted your mother to come, it was only that my lady insisted on it.” She looked up at Janna, suspicion in her eyes. “Why are you asking me all these questions?”

  Janna hesitated. She was being too blunt. “Forgive me. I believe my mother’s death was an accident, and I’m trying to find out how it happened. Did she swallow any of the decoctions she prepared for Dame Alice?”

  “No.”

  “So they could not have caused her death?”

  “No.”

  “Yet Dame Alice took them—and they helped to stop the bleeding and they gave her strength?”

  “Yes, indeed.” Utterly serious now, Cecily faced Janna. “We’d heard of your mother’s knowledge and skill in the matter of carrying and birthing babes from one of the kitchen maids. That was why—” She stopped abruptly, pink washing over her pale face.

  “That was why…?” Janna prompted, curious to understand why Cecily looked so embarrassed and uncomfortable.

  “Why…why Dame Alice sent Master Fulk to fetch your mother.” Cecily had hold of her girdle and, with restless fingers, was busily shredding the delicate fibres. Janna wondered at her apparent distress. Before she could question her, Cecily hurried on. “It was my lord Robert who asked Master Fulk to attend my lady. She soon saw that he had even less knowledge than the midwife when it came to…to…and the maid had said—”

  “I’m glad my mother was able to help Dame Alice,” Janna intervened, taking pity on Cecily’s reluctance to speak of womanly matters. “Did she say anything else before she died? Did she give any clue as to what ailed her?”

  Cecily hesitated. “I wondered if her wits had gone wandering. She said there were ants in the bedchamber, but there never were!” Indignation sharpened Cecily’s tone. It seemed she took the accusation personally. “‘Ants,’ she said. ‘Ants.’ Her words were quite clear.”

  Eadgyth’s intention was clear to Janna too. Her mother had told her that symptoms of monkshood poisoning included feeling cold, and also having the unpleasant sensation that ants were crawling over your skin. To be sure, she questioned Cecily again. “You said my mother called for a monk?”

  Cecily nodded vigorously. “That is true. I offered to send for the priest but she shook her head most violently. ‘Monk,’ she said. Even though she could hardly talk by then, she was most insistent about it.”

  “Are you sure she said monk, not monkshood?”

  “You mean the plant with the pretty blue flowers?” Cecily frowned, puzzled. As understanding came, she clasped her fist to her breast in shock. “But…but it’s poisonous!” she stammered.

  “Yes. Yes, it is.” Janna was torn between wanting to clear Eadgyth’s reputation and keeping her suspicions a secret until she could prove them. “It was just a silly thought I had. Don’t worry about it,” she said quickly.

  “Your name was on your mother’s lips as she died.” Cecily seemed anxious to switch to a safer topic. “Johanna.” Her voice softened in sympathy. “I am so sorry you came too late to speak to her.”

  “She called me Johanna?” She was only Johanna when she was in trouble. Eadgyth must have taken the anger of their argument to her death. The thought, piercing as an arrow, was enough to bring Janna to tears.

  “Actually, I thought Eadgyth was calling for ‘John,’ but when I asked one of the tiring women where he might be found, she told me your name. Your real name.”

  Janna felt sick with misery, sick that her mother had died without forgiving her for their quarrel. “I thank you for your time, for answering my questions.” She turned away, too dispirited to ask any more.

  A couple of small, grubby children were scooping mud from a puddle in the lane and carefully fashioning it into a castle. They reminded Janna of one last question. “Dame Alice’s new babe? How does he?”

  Cecily’s face crumpled into sadness. “He does very poor. When she first arrived at the manor, your mother bade us wash him and rub him with salt, and then wrap him tight. The cord had been cut to separate him from my lady, but it was not tied and there was a great deal of blood. Your mother took care of that, and took care also to cleanse his mouth and rub his gums with honey. As soon as she was done, the priest came in to Dame Alice to baptize the child in front of his parents. The baby is now in the care of a wet nurse, but he does not thrive. Your mother brought back with her a mixture to stimulate the child and help him suckle, but she fell ill before she could do much more than instruct the nurse as to its use.”

  Cecily’s voice echoed with misery. Janna felt a flash of warmth toward the tiring woman, who seemed so kind and compassionate. She wished Cecily could be her friend, even while acknowledging that the young wo
man was so far above her in station that this would always be impossible. Yet a friend was what Janna most desperately needed right now.

  “Cecily!” Hugh’s voice captured Janna’s attention. She tried to still a sudden kick of excitement as they turned in his direction. Janna watched him lead the huge black destrier toward them, along with a smaller brown horse on a leading rein. The gleam of appreciation in his eyes was for Cecily, not her. She bobbed a curtsy as his gaze swiveled to encompass her.

  “Johanna.”

  “Sire.” She would have spoken her thanks for his presence at her mother’s burial, but he forestalled her.

  “I understand that grief may have unbridled your tongue, but it was rash of you to speak as you did beside your mother’s grave. I fear you have made an enemy of the priest.”

  Janna flushed, shamed by his reproof, yet she was determined that he should understand her. “The priest is already my enemy,” she said. “He made himself so when he refused to bury my mother in consecrated ground.”

  “Nevertheless, you should not jeopardize your position in the village with public displays of this sort. I understand there has been a lot of hostility directed toward your mother, which might now spill over onto you.”

  Janna’s face darkened with resentment; she had thought Hugh an ally, but it seemed she’d been wrong.

  “Don’t misunderstand me,” he said quickly. “I agree with you that the priest acted outside his duty and showed no charity toward you or your mother, and I have just told him so. I’ve also warned him that I’ll be speaking to the abbess about it. She holds the barony from the king and has the bishop’s ear. You must let them deal with this priest together. Meanwhile you should more properly show concern for your own position in the village now that you no longer have your mother to protect you.”

  “I am of an age to protect myself!”

  “Certes you have the temper for it,” Hugh retorted, but he smiled as he said the words. Janna blushed anew. Mercifully, he turned his attention to Cecily, who stood silent by Janna’s side.