He kissed Hugh again and left, and while Hugh was still protesting that he was not at all tired, he fell asleep. He woke only an hour later and sat bolt upright, this time remembering his dream. “Your uncle,” he said to Audris, who was at the loom and came running, anxiously asking what ailed him. “I must speak to Sir Oliver. I must thank him for his hospitality and assure him it was not my intention to come here as if—” But the words died in his throat as Audris stopped and he saw the expression on her face.
She lowered her eyes. “He is dead, Hugh.” Then she ran to him and threw herself into the arms he opened to receive her. “He is dead,” she sobbed. “I could not save him. I tried. I swear I tried with all my strength and all my skill.”
“I am so sorry, my love,” Hugh whispered, holding her tight. And then “hearing” what she said, he added fiercely, “Of course you tried with all your strength and skill! Who says you did not?”
“No one,” Audris sobbed. “In fact, my aunt says he was dead when they brought him in and laid him down, but I felt his body move with breath, I am sure of it, and I keep wondering if deep in my heart I envied him Jernaeve and did not do all I could or ought.”
Hugh shook his head. “Hush, love. You wanted to believe him alive, and so you did. I have seen the newly dead seem to sigh with breathing. I do not know what it is, perhaps the soul passing. But for all your skill with potions and salves, dearling, I think your aunt has seen more death than you. Is it not true that in ordinary times you only came to those for whom there was hope?”
“Oh, yes,” she sighed. “That is true, but…” She started to cry again, more softly, hopelessly. “But I hardly ever told him I loved him—only once or twice—and he was so good to me. And I was often disobedient and vexed him, and… and…”
Hugh kissed her silent, rocking her comfortingly. “So we all feel when those we love die. So will I say to you, no doubt, when Thurstan is taken.”
“Thurstan?” Audris echoed, her sobs stopping abruptly. “Hugh, no! Oh, what will I do? You are not strong enough to travel.”
“No, no,” Hugh soothed. “I am sorry I frightened you. I hope he will have some years among us yet, but he is very frail and will not spare himself.”
“When you are well,” Audris said, brightening, “we will go to York so that he can see Eric. And we will take Uncle Ralph—”
Hugh laughed aloud. “Now there you have a truly brilliant notion. Perhaps Thurstan can save Ralph—and it might be that Ralph can insinuate a little balance and reason into Thurstan.” He was quiet for a few moments, and Audris moved tentatively. Hugh tightened his grip. “Lie with me,” he murmured, and then, in response to her wordless protest, he laughed gently. “I did not mean that—although I soon will, I think—but my body has been nothing but a trial to me for so long. It is good to feel pleasure in it again.”
By the end of that week, Hugh had made good his promise, although Audris insisted on mounting him so that he would need to exert himself less. When they were done, he protested in a playfully die-away voice that he was sure it would have been less exhausting if he had plunged and been done instead of being played with until he was half crazy before being allowed to spill his seed. But the next night it was he who gasped that he was too weak to climb atop; Audris made no protest, but later she meanly pointed out that his request cast some doubt on the complaints he had voiced the previous night. Whereupon, to her genuine concern—and equally genuine pleasure—he reversed the process and agreed, when he had caught his breath, that he was not too weak.
Hugh had made giant strides in recovery that week. His wounds had closed and lost their scabs, showing clean pink flesh where oozing sores had for so long resisted every poultice Audris could devise, and feeling no more than a little tender. He had sat up, been helped a few steps to a chair, walked by himself, and at last—with Morel walking backward in front of him and Fritha with her hands out to catch him—he had tottered down the stairs to eat dinner in the hall.
Hugh had to laugh, for his entry was—except for his slightly drunken weaving—like a triumphal procession. Eadyth had insisted he sit in Oliver’s chair, making the first jest he had ever heard from her when she commented that if he did not have the arms of the chair to support him, he would surely tip over, fall on the floor, and spoil everyone’s dinner because they would all have to leave off eating to fuss over him. And to make their joy utterly complete, just as Hugh had taken the seat offered, a messenger came from Bruno with the news that he had been knighted by the king and granted a pension. He had other news, also, the letter said, but he would save that to tell himself, for the king had promised him leave to visit his sister in a fortnight.
The only sour note was from Maud of Heugh, who came to the table, saw Hugh sitting at its head, and fainted dead away. She revived before Audris could even go to her but began to weep hysterically, and Eadyth took her to her chamber. “I cannot imagine what is wrong with Maud,” she said when she came back. “She is the most sensible creature ordinarily.”
“It is something about Hugh,” Audris said, looking troubled.
“Oh, he is not as ugly at that,” Ralph remarked blandly. “His face gave me quite a start, too, the first time I saw it, but it did not knock me unconscious…”
Hugh began to laugh; Audris gasped in pretended outrage, insisting that Hugh was not ugly at all and that Eric, clearly the most beautiful baby in the world, looked just like him. Whereupon Hugh began to commiserate with his son, and Ralph took back his remark, agreeing that Eric was the most beautiful baby in the world. The servants, in response to a sharp gesture from Eadyth, began to bring the meal, and between the food and the nonsense, Maud’s peculiar behavior was temporarily forgotten.
Unfortunately, it could not be permanently put out of mind, nor was Ralph in Jernaeve much longer to divert attention from Maud’s fixation. There had been a week of bad weather after Hugh first came down to the hall, but on the first bright day Ralph left for Ruthsson to oversee the sharing of the harvest. Maud had not been much in evidence while Hugh kept to the hall, where he listened to Eadmer, supported his decisions, and infrequently offered a suggestion about the restoration of the damage done by the Scots.
However, as Hugh regained his strength and spent more and more time in the bailey and storage areas of the keep, he seemed constantly to encounter Maud. She did not faint again, but would stare and run away, often weeping. A few times, Hugh tried to stop her and speak to her, to assure her that he did not blame her for whatever had happened to his father in Heugh keep—but he never got that far.
At last, exasperated, for Hugh had been sensitized to people who did not like him and he was beginning to have bad dreams about the woman, he mentioned the matter to Audris one day before he went down to break his fast.
She was suckling Eric and looked up from her peaceful contemplation of her son’s greed with a worried frown. “I know,” she said. “Maud follows you about.”
“Follows me?” Hugh repeated, astonished. “From the way she acts, I would think she would do everything to avoid me. Curse the woman. If she follows me, why will she not stop and speak to me? All I wish to do is tell her I have no ill will to her and ask her the name of the girl who is heir to Heugh and the name of her guardian. Something must be done about Heugh or it will fall into the king’s hands, and I do not want a royal castle so close to Trewick.”
But Audris shook her head and would not discuss Heugh. All she said was, “You exert a fatal fascination for Maud.” Then she sighed. “I suppose we will have to send her back to Heugh, but I hate to do it. She is treated with such contempt there, even by the lowest servants, and here she is a comfort to my aunt.”
“Then do not send her away,” Hugh said harshly. “We will not be here much longer ourselves.”
Audris looked at him levelly but said nothing, and Hugh turned hurriedly away, knowing that Jernaeve could not be left masterless any mor
e than Heugh, but Hugh had no idea what to do about it. He did not really wish to leave Jernaeve. The more deeply he became involved in restoring the damage done by the Scots, the more he loved old Iron Fist and desired to care for it and rule it himself. But try as he would to put that tapestry out of his mind, as long as he was the unicorn, he dared not call himself master of Jernaeve.
When he was gone, Audris went back to staring at Eric, but she was not seeing her son. She knew well enough what was troubling Hugh, but she could not think of a way to undo the damage she had done when she showed him the tapestry. Why had she ever done it, she wondered, and then closed her eyes over tears. She had done it to protect her uncle—but her device had worked too well. Now that Oliver was dead, she knew her husband was no danger to her keep, but nothing she said seemed to convince him. Yet Jernaeve was too important a stronghold to place in hands that might become untrustworthy; there were not many Olivers in the world, who, for honor, would yield up what they had loved and cared for. Somehow, she must find a way to convince Hugh that the image of the unicorn no longer applied to him.
The trouble was that Hugh still really thought of himself as Licorne. He called himself Hugh of Ruthsson, but that was his mother’s name, what he would be called if he were a bastard. Hugh needed his father’s name. And as the idea came to her, she gasped. What a fool she had been not to put the two things together! Maud knew who Kenorn was and what had happened to him. Eager to rush off and bring Maud and Hugh to a confrontation, Audris looked down at her son impatiently, but he was still sucking, and to take the breast from him would only cause chaos. The enforced stillness gave her second thoughts. She was so sure that Kenorn was some relation of Lionel’s—but what if she was wrong? What if the secret causing Maud’s misery was shameful to Hugh? She had better wring it from Maud herself and then decide what to do.
At last Eric sighed, gave a last pull on Audris’s breast, and let the nipple slip from his mouth. She lifted him to her shoulder, quite willing to wait while rumbles shook Eric’s body as the air he had swallowed with his milk came up. Audris continued to pat him patiently, until she felt his head droop heavily, and then she bade Fritha watch him and went down to break her own fast.
To her chagrin, she discovered that Maud had asked to go to Hexham and Eadyth had arranged to send her there. And Hugh was gone by the time she entered the hall, too, which worried her a little, but he came in to dinner in a better mood, not having come across Maud even once. He looked tired, though. Audris knew he was impatient with what seemed to him a slow recovery of his strength, so after dinner she deliberately enticed him out into the garden. Intending only to make him willing to stay and rest, she chose a spot with tender memories—the sheltered grassy plot where they had suddenly and unexpectedly made love when he returned from taking Thurstan to Roxburgh.
She had hardly begun, “Do you remember—” when Hugh began to demonstrate that he remembered all too well. He started to caress her in jest, and she responded as playfully, expecting that they would draw apart naturally at any moment, but somehow the caresses soon became more immediately important than the eventual fate of Jernaeve, and they found themselves half undressed, as passionately entangled as if they did not have a private chamber and a comfortable bed in which to disport themselves. Then it was too late, and besides, the chance that some member of the household might come there lent spice to their passion, so they finished their lovemaking where they were, half laughing, half ashamed, and too lazy and satisfied when their love had been consummated to do more than straighten their clothes and collapse again onto the grass.
In minutes Hugh, who had been tired to begin with, was deeply asleep with his head pillowed in Audris’s lap while she rested her back against the bench—the same bench, she remembered, which they had been sitting on when her uncle came upon them, frightening them so much. She had stopped crying every time she thought of Oliver, but memory made her eyes sweep the garden, and she stiffened and hissed, “Stop!” And then softly, but with such authority that she was obeyed, “Come here.”
Slowly Maud came around the rosebushes that sheltered the grassy plot and into the open. “Forgive me,” she said. “I did not mean to spy on you, but—” Her face twisted. “I once thought to have that—to love my husband and take joy in him. Kenorn—”
“This is Hugh, not Kenorn,” Audris said, glancing down at her husband, but their voices did not seem to disturb him. His body was flaccid in total relaxation, his face turned slightly inward toward her body, his breathing deep and even.
“No,” Maud said. Her eyes were also on Hugh, and tears were leaking down her cheeks. “I meant Kenorn—your husband’s father. I was supposed to be betrothed to Kenorn, not Lionel. Kenorn was nothing like the other Heughs. He was always laughing and kind—so kind to me when I first went there, not quite thirteen and frightened to death.” Then her lips hardened, and she dashed the tears angrily from her face. “At first I only thought he was being kind when he refused to marry me. I believed it was because he thought me too young—but he had another woman.”
Audris had scarcely heard Maud’s angry remarks. She was thinking about the earlier statements, putting together the fact that Maud was meant for Kenorn with what she had said about Heugh belonging to Hugh. In general it was the elder brother for whom a wife was found first. “Sit down here on the grass,” she directed, gesturing to the place she wanted Maud to sit, then paused while Maud sank down facing her but near enough to touch. “Do you mean Sir Kenorn, Hugh’s father, was Sir Lionel’s elder brother?” she asked.
“Yes, the elder—and I had a rich dowry, far richer than what that other woman could have brought.”
So Heugh keep did indeed belong to Hugh. But this time Maud’s bitter tone came through to Audris, and she put that consideration aside, hoping she could soothe Maud and perhaps persuade her to act more rationally toward Hugh.
“That was so long ago,” she said. “You must try to forget it. I am sorry Hugh looks so much like his father and brings back sad memories, but I hope you will try to put those memories away and come to love Hugh. You see, he will be very glad to learn you are his aunt, because—”
“No!” Maud gasped, shrinking in on herself. “No! He must hate me!”
Audris remembered that Maud had used those very same words when they were in Heugh and she had tried to comfort her. “Lady Maud,” she pleaded, “you are making my poor Hugh very unhappy by your unhappiness. You must try to believe that whatever the past holds, Hugh will not—”
“No,” she repeated, her eyes wide and fixed. “You do not understand. We sinned against him—against him and against Kenorn, Lionel, and me. We hated each other, but we were bound together by sin, and by sin heaped on sin.”
“It was so long ago—” Audris began, but Maud did not even seem to hear her.
She looked down at Hugh, and there was such torment in her face that Audris’s eyes filled with tears. “Long ago? Perhaps, but the evil is still new. That evening—it was after the evening meal, but the light had not yet gone—I saw Kenorn ride in, with only two men, but he did not stop to speak to me. He went directly to—that place no longer exists in Heugh; the keep was not yet built then, and Heugh was not so great. Later, I was summoned, and Lionel was already there in the old man’s private place—and as I came in, I heard the old man screaming that he would have the marriage annulled, that Kenorn was pledged to me. And Kenorn just laughed at him—he always laughed at his father’s tantrums—and reminded him that he had not gone through with the betrothal and it was too late. Not only was he married, but his wife was heavy with child.”
Maud hesitated and drew a shaken breath. “It was like a knife in my heart when I heard him,” she continued. “He had given me gifts and called me a pretty child—and all the time he had a wife. For a minute I hoped again when the old man screamed, ‘A bastard! A bastard!’ but Kenorn laughed again and said that proof of the marriage was in a safe
place, and his father should be glad of it because he had mended the feud with Ruthsson for good. Then the old man struck him! He grabbed up the iron poker from the hearth and struck Kenorn right across the face from here to here.”
Maud made a line from the forehead across the cheek and down to the jawbone. Audris gasped, remembering the flaming bruise that had marred Hugh’s face after the battle with Sir Lionel. It had traced a line just where Maud’s finger had run. She shivered, thinking that the Lord had taken His vengeance, as it said in the Bible, in His own good time.
“Hugh will not blame you,” she soothed. “You were no more than a child yourself.”
Tears ran again from the tired, reddened eyes. “But we never told,” Maud whispered. “Lionel helped his father carry Kenorn out in the dead of the night and bury him. I could have confessed to a priest, brought him to the grave and had the ground blessed, but I did not. I hated Kenorn then, for scorning me, for wedding another.” Sobs broke her voice, but she struggled on, and Audris no longer tried to stop her, knowing she must confess it all before she could be comforted. “They buried him in unhallowed ground, unshriven,” she sobbed, choking but keeping her voice low—and her eyes were still on Hugh. “They killed his soul, kind, laughing Kenorn.”
“No,” Audris said firmly. “Christ and his Mother are infinitely merciful. So I was taught by Father Anselm, and so I believe. They would intercede for a good man with the stern Father. Kenorn would not be damned for trying to make peace between two warring families.”
Maud dried her eyes and looked up at Audris. “Is that true?” she asked. “I was so afraid, but I never dared so much as hint, not even to a priest…”
“Yes, it is true,” Audris stated. “Father Anselm was a very, very holy man, and if he said so, it was true.”
“But still,” Maud sighed, “still it was a dreadful sin. We never tried, even after the old man died—and that was only three years later—we never tried to find out if the child had lived. We knew if it was a boy, it was the rightful heir to Heugh. We hoped it was dead; we prayed it was dead. Yes, although I hated Lionel and he hated me—” She hesitated again, and her eyes grew distant. “Perhaps that was my fault too. He was a hard man, but if I had not showed him I thought him loathsome, perhaps… No, it was the evil in us that bred hate and more hate. I—I prayed that the woman and the child would die… in the beginning, before I realized how great a sin it was to pray that a child would die.”
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