Death and the Maiden

by Samantha Norman

  Unable to match her enthusiasm, and disconcerted by the speed and gusto of her approach, Adelia recoiled. “Forgive me,” she said. “But I don’t understand. Who talks about me? Do we know one another, you and I? . . . I must admit you do seem familiar somehow, Lady . . . erm . . . Lady . . . ?” She clapped her hand to her head. “I’m so sorry but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.”

  The woman gave a warm chuckle; almost everything Adelia said or did appeared to delight her.

  “Course you ’ave,” she said, grinning broadly. “Course you ’ave, and will be excused for ’avin’ done so! Only just acquainted with it, ain’t you? . . . No, we ain’t met, but you’ll know me when I tell you I’m Gyltha’s sister!”

  Allie saw her mother’s mouth open and close like that of a newly landed fish, until she absorbed the information, at which point a correspondingly broad smile spread across her face, too.

  “Allie, Rowley,” she cried, throwing her arms wide. “Look. It’s Penda, Gyltha’s sister!”

  Their spat temporarily forgotten, Rowley and Allie exchanged glances.

  “I didn’t know she had a sister,” Rowley mouthed as he got up. Allie shrugged. Neither did she.

  “So you’re Rowley!”

  The woman extricated herself—and with some difficulty—from Adelia’s grasp and bounded toward him. “Heard all about you an’ all,” she said, taking his hands and shaking them vigorously. “And you!” she said, dropping them unceremoniously and pushing him aside as soon as she saw Allie standing behind him. “You must be little Allie! Well, well, well! And not so little neither. A beauty! Just like Gylth said! Well, I never!”

  She stood beaming at Allie, holding her gaze for what felt like an age, until, all of a sudden, her expression clouded and she turned back to Adelia.

  “But I’m forgetting myself and the reason I’ve come,” she said. “It’s Gylth. She needs you, mistress, needs you badly. She’s sick and I’m afraid that ’less there’s something you can do for her, she’ll die.”

  Adelia saw the gimlet eyes compress against the burgeoning tears and a lump rose in her throat. The idea of anything happening to Gyltha, the woman on whom she had depended for as long as she could remember, was unconscionable.

  “Then I must go to her immediately,” she said, trying to stand up, only to be forced back onto her stool by the swingeing pain in her ankle. “God rot it!” she cried, thumping the table with the side of her fist. “For God’s sake! Don’t just sit there! Help me up, somebody, please!”

  A palpable hush descended on the room as Rowley knelt down beside her.

  “Adelia, darling,” he murmured softly, “you’re in no condition to go anywhere or do anything. Even you must realize that, and for once, I’m afraid, you can’t help.” He reached out to take her hand but she pushed him away, shaking her head as a bitter irony dawned on her.

  In the past it had been Rowley, as the king’s harbinger, who would turn up, mostly when she least expected, with a summons from Henry, which would invariably involve a perilous journey of some sort and almost always separation from Allie and Gyltha.

  Then, as now, she resented him for it, only this time for enforcing the separation by insisting that, for once, she stay put.

  She stared at him uncomprehendingly for a moment, wondering how he could possibly not see it, too, then turned away. It was almost too painful to look at him.

  “Adelia,” he persisted, “listen to me, darling, please! There is nothing you can do, not now, and certainly not with that ankle . . . But if it makes you happy I will send—and tonight, if you insist—to the infirmarian at Ely and ask him to attend Gyltha himself. He’s a good chap, certainly knows his medicine. She’ll be in good hands!”

  He reached for her again, taking her face in his hands and turning it gently toward him, but she twisted free.

  “How could you?” she hissed. “How could you? This is Gyltha we’re talking about! Not some scrofulous novice with a head cold! It’s Gyltha! And she needs me! Do you hear . . . Me!” She broke off for a moment, her voice cracking with emotion. “Not some oaf of an infirmarian who doesn’t know his arse from his elbow. Now help me up! Rowley, please. I beg you!”

  “Adelia!”

  An imperious voice sounded, silencing them both.

  Lady Emma had had enough. Now that she had come to terms with the fact that the evening she had so lovingly planned was unsalvageable, she had regained her composure and was determined to employ it to the greater good.

  “Adelia, my dear,” she said, fixing her with an implacable stare. “For once in your life you are going to have to listen to poor Rowley and do exactly as he says. Why, with that ankle of yours, you’re no use to anybody and you certainly can’t go charging about the country to . . . Oh my goodness! . . . Where is it they come from, these people? . . . The Fens, is it? . . . Well, good Lord! It’s at least four days’ ride from here. You simply cannot go and there’s an end to the matter!”

  Adelia opened her mouth to remonstrate with her but Emma wagged her finger and shook her head. “No, I’m sorry, ’Delia. Really I am, but, for the time being, you will have to stay here.”

  When she had dealt with Adelia she turned to Penda, the intransigent gaze this time directed at a point fractionally above her eyebrows—a ploy she normally reserved to intimidate the servants.

  “Lady Penda,” she said coldly. “I’m sorry to have to tell you—but since nobody else seems prepared to do so, I fear it’s left to me—that your journey here has been wasted. As you must know, we are all terribly fond of Gyltha, and wish her a speedy recovery, but Mistress Adelia is quite unable to help.” When Penda opened her mouth to protest, she scowled and the forbidding finger wagged again.

  “However,” she continued, closing her eyes to deflect any further dissent, “you are welcome to spend the night here. Sir Jocelyn will see to it that you and your retinue . . .” She paused for a moment as it struck her that a woman as outlandish as this one might equally be reckless enough to travel alone. “You do have one, I presume?”

  When, to her surprise, Penda nodded, she carried on.

  “Very good . . . Well, in that case, you will be given every comfort, and tomorrow—” And like the exemplary host she was, she was about to promise ample provision for the journey home, when Allie interrupted her.

  “Wait!” she said, her face flushed with excitement. “I could go! I could go instead. After all, I know as much medicine as Ma and we can’t abandon Gyltha! We simply can’t!” She turned to Rowley, dropping to her knees in supplication.

  “Get up, Allie! Get up at once!” he hissed, mortified. “You will not go and that’s an end to the matter.”

  Once again silence fell. At one end of the hall the abbot and Father Michael were offering up silent prayers of gratitude for their vows of celibacy; at the other, the servants desperately tried to busy themselves elsewhere.

  But Allie was unabashed.

  “Do you mean to tell me that you won’t lift a finger to help?” She blinked back the tears pricking her eyes, then decided to let them fall. It would serve him right. How could he forget what he owed to Gyltha? His life for a start! If it hadn’t been for her tireless nursing of him when he returned from Italy so terribly wounded all those years ago, he would have died. And that apart, how could he forget the support she had given, standing by them all so resolutely through the topsy-turvying of their peripatetic lives, to provide the only constant in hers?

  “I tell you,” she continued, breathless with emotion, “that I would rather die than let anything happen to Gyltha. But then I doubt you can see that—in fact I doubt you can see very much at all beyond your miserable obsession with marrying me off!” Before he could respond, she ran out of the hall. While waves of shock swept around the hall like an ill wind, rendering everybody else speechless, Penda had an epiphany: a native cunning—some long-forgotten opportunism—sparked to life like an invisible conspirator handing her a weapon.

  “My lo
rd bishop,” she said, suppressing a stab of pity when she saw the anxiety etched in Rowley’s face, “I’m sorry for everything. But I know what it is to worry about the ones you love and to fear that ’less you do right by ’em you’ll lose ’em—we got that between us, you ’n’ me.” She paused for a moment, trying to gauge his reaction thus far, and, relieved by something that might be construed as a flicker of recognition, continued.

  “Now, I know, because Gyltha told me, that you love your daughter like nothin’ else and that her safety and future happiness is all that matters to you . . . Well then, I’ll offer this: Let her come to the Fens—oh, I’ll keep her safe, you have my word on that, and believe me, I can protect her. So let ’er come and help Gyltha like she wants to, and in return, I will help you.”

  She paused again when he glanced at Adelia, who was still staring at the door in mute misery, as though by sheer force of will she could drag Allie back through it. For a moment Rowley, too, looked as though he was teetering on the brink of chasing after her through it, until, to her enormous relief, he turned his attention back to her.

  “How?” he asked, eyes narrowed suspiciously. “How can you help?”

  “Well.” Penda swallowed, steeling herself to stay calm for what was to be the crucial stage of the negotiation. It had been a very long time since she had had to think on her feet quite so quickly and with so much at stake. “You want her married off, don’t you? Ain’t that what your argument was about?”

  Rowley nodded slowly, warily.

  “Well, back in the Fens there’s a young lord, name of Peverell, whose estate marches with mine. He’s good-lookin’, wealthy ’n’ all, got land over more’n fourteen counties and, what’s more, is looking for a wife.”

  While she spilled these facts, she dared not look at him; when at last she did, and saw his expression of implacable suspicion unchanged, her heart sank, until an unexpected champion in the form of Lady Emma piped up.

  “Peverell?” she said, her face lighting up. “Peverell, did you say? But what a coincidence! I know the family well!” She turned to Rowley. “The younger boy was a squire here a while back. You remember him, don’t you, Rowley, dear? Such a pleasant young man. Took the cross, like his older brother, if I remember correctly, but his brother was killed, poor soul. Oh, Rowley.” She clapped her hands in delight. “I think this puts a whole new complexion on things, don’t you! They’re an extremely good family, they really are! My goodness! If you can arrange it, it would be a most wonderful match for Allie.”

  Rowley bit his cheek to suppress a nascent smile: it wouldn’t do to capitulate quite yet, but, as Emma said, things were beginning to look up. With this renewed optimism he turned to Adelia again, hoping for a sign of encouragement, but she was still staring forlornly at the door.

  Actually she had long since given up hope of Allie’s reappearing and was instead quietly wrestling a temptation to throw something at Emma’s head.

  She loved her dearly, but there were times—and this was one—when the differences in their attitudes, especially when it came to Allie, were unbridgeable.

  Unlike Adelia, Emma saw no virtue in Allie’s idiosyncrasies nor enchantment in what Adelia called her daughter’s “freedom of spirit” and Emma termed her “faroucheness.” And there had been several occasions when Emma had indulged her irritation with her woundingly, riding roughshod over the unspoken rules of motherhood by haranguing Adelia about her daughter’s lack of conformity with many a cautionary tale about where it would lead. So the fact that she had leapt on the mention of this Lord Peverell person with such enthusiasm automatically made Adelia suspicious. A “good match” for Allie, as far as Emma was concerned, was simply a ruse to tidy her up like a frayed end irrespective of Allie’s own wishes or future happiness. At times like these she had to dig very deep indeed to stop herself from biting Emma’s head off and remember that beneath it all lurked a good and loving soul whose unrivaled generosity had fed, housed and watered them both for longer than she could remember.

  She looked up to a row of expectant faces staring at her.

  “I don’t give a bugger about the match,” she said, occasioning a sharp, collective intake of breath. But she didn’t care. She was tired, it had been the most dreadful evening, her ankle was hurting and all she wanted to do was find Allie and comfort her.

  “Quite frankly,” she continued, “I don’t care about this Lord Peverell—whoever he may be—or any of that business, in fact.” She broke off to glare at Rowley. “I just want Allie to be happy and for Gyltha to be well. And as soon as this bloody ankle of mine is better I will go to the Fens myself . . . But until then I insist that you send Allie in my place, because if anything should happen to Gyltha”—she stopped for a moment, this time fixing Rowley with a stare worthy of the Gorgon—“I will never forgive you.”

  And so it was decided; at first light the next morning, Allie would leave Wolvercote with Penda for that strange half land in the east known as the Fens.

  Chapter 7

  The Fens

  Hawise, pinioned on the threshold of her aunt’s cottage by the three small whirling bodies excitedly chanting her name, breathed in the familiar scent of the place: tallow from the newly lit candles, aromatic spices that hung in gourds from the ceiling rafters and that tantalizing, hunger-making waft of something delicious that seemed to bubble in perpetuity on the trivet over the fire.

  “Hush now!” Ediva, the children’s mother and her aunt, scolded the children as she took her mantle from the perch beside the door and prepared to leave. “Finish your supper, now, and, for goodness’ sake, pipe down! Let Hawise settle afore you start annoying her, else she’ll ’ave to go home and you’ll be stuck with me for the night.”

  She winked in sly triumph when the children scampered back to the table and sat down quietly.

  “Father’s waiting,” Hawise said, reaching up to hang her mantle on the vacant peg. “Mind how you go, though, it’s bitter out, so best wrap up warm.”

  Ediva peered through the window at the forlorn figure who was waiting for her in the cart and shivered.

  “Poor bugger!” she said. “It’s perishing. Never known the like . . . Lovely ’n’ warm in here though, bor, so get yourself over by the fire and tell me the news quickly when you’ve warmed a bit.”

  Hawise shuffled to the middle of the room, where a turf fire, which was almost as old as the cottage itself, smoldered, and held out her hands to it, grimacing at the prickling sensation in her fingertips as they began to thaw.

  “There isn’t any news really,” she said with a sigh. “Gyltha’s much the same. Father went up this morning as usual but says as how she’s sleeping most of the time now . . .”

  “No sign of Penda and the mistress, then?”

  Hawise shook her head. “Not yet. Day or two more mebbe . . . That’s what Father reckons anyway.”

  Ediva shook her head, put on her gloves and pulled up her hood.

  “Well, it’s a long way for ’em to come, I suppose. God speed ’em though, bless their hearts . . . And you lot,” she said with one last menacing glower at the children. “You be good for Hawise, now. I shan’t be long but I don’t want to hear no tales about you when I get back. D’you hear?”

  When she opened the door an icy blast gusted into the room, sending the children running to Hawise for comfort.

  “Hush now, silly old things,” she said, gathering them into her arms. “You heard what your mother said: you’re to be good for me this evening.”

  The children gazed up at her, nodding emphatically.

  “Good. Well then, first things first. Have you done all your carding?” This was addressed to ten-year-old Cecelia, the eldest of the three, who pointed proudly to the corner of the room where several yarn-laden distaffs were neatly propped.

  “There’s a good girl,” Hawise said, rewarding her with a kiss on the top of her head. “And Arthur?” she asked, turning to the middle child, the only boy. “Have you fed the chic
kens?” Arthur nodded, blushing to the roots of his hair when she kissed him, too.

  “Good,” she said, and was just about to marshal them over to the fire when a loud squawk announced the presence of a hen as it dropped clumsily from the rafters in search of leftovers. Arthur yelped and ran toward it, flapping his arms to send it back to its perch in the smoke-blackened timbers.

  When both the hen and the boy had settled again, Hawise drew up a stool, pulling baby Eva onto her lap.

  “So, what shall we do now, then?” she asked.

  The children grinned.

  It was part of the ritual, the tireless joke between them, that, whenever she came, Cousin Hawise would pretend to have forgotten that the reason they were so fond of her and craved her company was because she was, by some distance, the finest storyteller in the family.

  It was a gift apparently bestowed on her at birth and—as far as anyone knew—without provenance. Neither parent had it, and both were often heard to wonder about its origin and, indeed, why such a blessing—if a blessing it actually was—had been conferred on their only child.

  “We want a story! A story!” the children clamored excitedly.

  “Oh, a story?” Hawise affected the surprise of the time-honored tradition. “A story? But aren’t you a bit old for stories nowadays? Won’t you be bored?”

  The children scowled. Sometimes she had a tendency to take the teasing a little too far . . .

  “No we’re not, Hawise! . . . We’re not too old! We want a story! You know we do! A story! Please! Please! Please!”

  Amused by the indignation on their faces, Hawise smiled and put her finger to her lips, appealing for the silence they knew must be granted before she began.

  “Hush,” she said.

  The children closed their eyes and held their breath in exquisite anticipation of the great moment.

  Outside, in the cottage garth, an owl screeched as another wintry gust bowled in over the marsh, rattling the window shutters. The children shivered and shuffled closer to Hawise, darting nervous glances into the darkness of the room behind them.