Torn (The Handfasting)

by Becca St. John

The crusades had driven deep the reality of mankind's cruelty against man. It taught him to trust the world's ability to twist innocent souls toward evil. He'd seen precious little evidence of goodness' reign. It just didn't happen.

  That Kenneth still believed in such fairytales was a measure of the man not the society that reared him.

  The Veri Roland remembered would never have taken a life. On the contrary, she had found him alone and dieing in a meadow, the victim of an ambush, and saved his life by tending to his wounds.

  Before Roland left for crusades his father had been reduced to a wasted shadow of his former self. Veri healed him with her uncanny ability with herbs. Child or not, she saved them both. That was why Roland had given her the protection of his name, a secured future at Oakland, in gratitude, and with his father's blessing.

  His father who was no more.

  Time changed all things, all people.

  "Roland?” Kenneth prompted.

  He turned back, sadness tamped, if not distanced. "Who knows what manner of woman she became. All females transform when they come of age, especially when they are steeped in the affairs of a castle as great and powerful as Oakland. Ambition has taken the least likely and made devils of them."

  "She was not like other women, Roland," Mother Rose tried, "she was not raised . . . "

  "Raised?" This did lift his interest.

  When the child had found him in that bloody meadow, she had been alone, had nursed him alone. It had always been a sticky point to him. Orphaned, absolutely, but why would a child of no more than eight, possibly ten, years be abandoned? And where would she have acquired such skills? She claimed her father was a coal maker, her mother knowledgeable with herbs but still . . ."

  "We knew of her at the convent. Actually, I knew of her before you found her."

  "And you left her abandoned in the wilderness?"

  The mother superior concentrated on the lint of her habit. She stroked, plucked, but did not look up, as she formed her reply.

  Rather than give confidence to Veri's plight, this new information made her even more suspect. She was something other than an abandoned child of the wilderness. She had allies. She had adults who would guide her.

  The church was always hungry for land. His step-mother and her sainted Father Ignacious where testament to that.

  "She was not so much alone, as you might think.” Rose finally met his eye, challenged him with the directness of her stare.

  "And a convent, such as Our Lady's, is well versed in healing and herbs.” Roland nodded, as a picture grew within his mind. That it was not equal to the picture the Mother Superior would wish him to see, mattered not to him.

  "Yes," she nodded, smiled, "we are known for our healing. As a child, Lady Veri spent many hours among our gardens, though she did not live with us."

  "There must have been someone."

  "There was," distressed, Mother Rose looked to the alcove, studied the women there. She seemed to reach some conclusion for she continued. "There was a grandmother, an old woman, terribly feeble. Veri had only just lost her when she found you."

  "I see," he lied. He did not see at all. Answers to questions that plagued him for years, that Veri's simple answers had never quenched, were now being answered. But why not before? Why had she never mentioned the old woman? Why had Veri lied back then? When Ignacious had flung accusations of the devil at her, why had she not said she was associated with Our Lady's?

  Obviously, her falsehoods started well before he left Oakland. Hell, they started before he had even brought her here.

  The sister's words had not paused with Roland's thoughts. He barely registered what she was saying until he heard, ". . . she had enemies."

  His head shot up.

  "Enemies? An odd thing to say of an innocent, hapless child. How would she gain enemies?"

  Rose looked over her shoulder to Kenneth who stretched his neck as if to ease a tight collar. When he cleared his throat, Roland realized he had never seen the friar in such a state of discomfort. Never. Kenneth was the calmest of men, with a soul known for soothing others. Roland frowned.

  "She gained enemies here, Roland. As you know, Father Ignacious never approved of her, your step-mother, well . . ."

  "Threw her in the dungeon once, nearly had her hung."

  "Precisely." Kenneth nodded, smiled that he was making his point.

  "That was why I took her to wife, to ensure her place, her acceptance." Roland argued.

  Kenneth shook his head. "It was not so easy as that, Roland, as well you know. There was no heir . . ."

  "No heir?" Roland roared, striding from the fire to stand solidly before the sister, as close to Kenneth as he could get. "Just what the hell was I then?"

  "Settle down," Kenneth moved to stand between Mother Rose and Roland. Roland stepped back. "You were heir, and now. . . you rule Oakland. But she, Lady Veri, did not carry your seed."

  "I should say not. She was a child when we wed, when I left. There was time enough."

  "If you survived."

  A bitter smile crossed Roland's lips. "Oh, I survived, in my own manner. The question is, how did she survive? What skills did she utilize to keep her in my absence? It has been ten years, since I left. From what they tell me, five years since my father's death, God rest his soul.

  "What has become of her in the meantime?” Roland sat back down, his legs crossed nonchalantly, as if he cared little for the importance of the conversation. "It seems you may be the only ones," his arm swept out to encompass all of those present, "who do know where she has been all these years."

  “Your wife has been with the sisters since she left this place.” Father Kenneth blurted baldly, his wry half smile evidence enough that he knew this came as a surprise. Roland had to restrain himself from bolting forward with the shock of it.

  Searches for Veri had been extensive, yet no one had thought of a nunnery. Evil people did not seek sanctuary within Holy walls.

  That was the belief of the masses, but Roland was not of the masses. On campaign to the Holy Lands, he met many spiritual men, and many men of greed and lust who’d claimed vows of poverty and chastity. Holy walls held evil as well as good.

  “What is it she wants?” He stretched his legs out before him as he lounged in his place. “Does she wish to come back, to claim the riches she so hastily abandoned? Does she wish to administer to me as she did to my father? Will she play the loving wife?”

  “On the contrary, Roland, she wishes the marriage to be annulled.”

  Roland sat up, no longer hiding his interest. “Annulled?” It was the second time Kenneth had surprised him with his words. First, that Veri had been hiding in a convent no more than half a day’s ride away. Second that she wished the marriage annulled. This was a contingent he never envisaged; though now, perhaps, he realized he should have.

  Of course he should have.

  She would hold him to an offer she did not deserve.

  She would imagine herself safe within the walls of a convent. To retrieve her would be to challenge the church. Not just the one convent, but the whole of the church. For an act against the part would be seen as an act against the whole. She would be free of him and his vengeance. Or so she would think. She wouldn’t know that nothing, not even the church, could withstand Roland’s anger.

  But, in her mind, she had sanctuary. So being, what would it cost Roland to buy his freedom? What price would she put on the annulment? They must think him desperate for without it he would never be free to marry, to produce an heir. To her mind, she had him cornered.

  Hiding his thoughts he asked, “What does she want? What price, for the dissolution of the marriage?”

  The friar looked to Sister Rose. She nodded and turned to Roland. “Her only wish is that you listen to her side of the story. That you not judge her on the word of others.”

  Roland shot off the bench as swiftly as his calm shattered. “Not judge her?”

  Again, he was taken by surprise. She a
sked a high price indeed, but not to be paid, as he would have thought.

  He stalked to the fireplace, his back to all within the room as, once again, he fought against emotion. The fire beckoned his gaze, mesmerized him as he remembered Veri, the child she had been.

  Such a fey thing, no surprise many thought her a witch. In truth, even as a child, her ability to heal was unsettling. But he had been grateful for that ability, as his father had been after him.

  Why don’t they like me? The question had haunted him. She had asked that when still new to Oakland, and with good reason. She was no more than a peasant child, who spoke the language of old, the Celtic tongue. That, in itself, made her suspect. That she should be given absolute care of his father, when he was so near death, did not gain her allies. Yes, she had, had enemies back then, until his father had strengthened. Until she had proved herself worthy of being a part of Oakland.

  He had to shut such thoughts out. That was the past. It mattered not that he yearned to believe in Veri. That she alone, could re-instill his faith in mankind. Should she prove not guilty of the crimes, should she prove to be the same innocent soul who found him wounded and dying within a meadow, then the world would tip once more. It would become a place of light rather than darkness.

  He hungered for that.

  He knew the impossibility of it. She had lied to him even before he had left. The world was not a place of goodness.

  She was his one weakness.

  He must not weaken.

  Pivoting, he faced Kenneth and the sisters of Our Lady’s. “She wants me to hear her story?”

  Slowly, thoughtfully, he walked around the room, toward the three huddled together in the alcove. He glanced at the shadowed features beneath the cowls of their cape hoods, before he gestured toward the others. “And are these her witnesses? Are each of these women,” he studied the three closest to him, “here to claim Veri’s goodness?”

  “You have heard many lies,” Mother Rose told him, “It is time you heard many truths.”

  “Truths? Such as the wolf spoke when he wore lamb’s clothing?”

  He fought for calm, but something in the air, some elemental charge of energy, filled him, tested his senses. Not danger, such as Roland had come to know, but something else entirely. Anticipation, exhilaration, it swirled through him, as though he was on the verge of victory.

  He had her. He had her within his grasp. He knew where she was and how to bait her from her den.

  “She relies on others? Afraid to speak for herself?”

  Father Kenneth beckoned Roland back by the fire, “You need to hear the whole of it, Roland, and you need to let your mind open before she can show herself to you.”

  Mother Rose crossed to Roland, took his arm to guide him to return to his former place.

  He shook her off as the friar continued, “You are not the man you were, but that does not mean the fellow of balanced judgment is not within you.” The friar acknowledged the bench again, “Come back, be seated, we will discuss this.”

  They were too insistent.

  “What are you afraid of, Friar Kenneth? Mother Superior?”

  “That you will not listen to reason”

  Roland didn’t believe him. There was more to it than that. Rose’s gaze flickered between Kenneth and one of the sisters, as though seeking guidance. Roland suspected the Mother Superior was a woman who wore calm as easily as another donned a hat. A woman who confidently made her own decisions. Yet worry shadowed her eyes.

  She was troubled. Why?

  Roland looked about him again. The gaggle of nuns by the door, more within the alcove and the Friar with the Mother Superior. Once again, he noted the woman in the alcove. Not the women, but the one woman; the one who stood off to the side, deep in shadow, looking through the window at nothing but blackness as if the discussion held no significance.

  The one who Rose looked to for answers.

  Slowly Roland pivoted, to view the woman straight on.

  Oh, they truly were fools, totally inept at strategy.

  They had brought their queen to the king’s lair.

  Check mate!

  “She is here!” In two strides, he cut off the protective move of others, made toward the figure, and was upon her. With one tug he pulled back the hood, to stare into the face of his treacherous wife. “You fool!” Elation spilled over, as he beamed his victory.