The Marriage Test

by Betina Krahn

  The Marriage Test

  Betina Krahn

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Author's Note

  Copyright

  For

  Nicholas August Lord Krahn

  May the road rise to meet you

  Chapter One

  It was a devilish bad night to be a traveler. A cold April rain had beat down steadily all day, and as night fell, the overflowing ruts in the roads merged to form ponds of sucking mud that would have given even the most seasoned of pilgrims pause. In view of those dismal conditions, the inhabitants of the Convent of the Brides of Virtue were surprised by a fierce pounding on the inner gate of the convent’s courtyard just as they were preparing for the evening meal.

  When the good sisters opened the door, two armor-clad figures were huddled under the eaves with water trickling down their faces. The two knights, one stout as an oaken barrel and the other lean as a Lincolnshire longbow, requested food.

  “Axel of Grandaise, Reverend Mother. We’ve come from the Channel coast … headed to our home in the south,” the shorter, rounder of the two declared, when they were allowed to step out of the weather.

  The abbess slid her hands into the ends of her voluminous dark sleeves and looked at them in unblinking expectation.

  “Greeve of Grandaise, Your Bountifulness.” The taller, leaner one took up the explanation. “We have just escorted a shipment of wine to England. Wine produced by our lord’s vineyards.” The men seemed to hold their breaths as if awaiting a reaction. When there was none, Sir Greeve continued. “We stopped in the nearby village and inquired where we might find the best food in the area. The innkeeper said it was to be had at your most hospitable convent.”

  The abbess’s eyes narrowed.

  “We are famished, Reverend Mother,” Sir Axel said balefully.

  The abbess was a heartbeat away from ordering them back onto their horses when there came a subtle, metallic clink, clink, clink from between them. She knew the sound of coins eager to escape a purse when she heard it.

  “We should have food enough to share. Come inside.”

  The abbess herself conducted the men to the audience chamber where a pair of old sisters appeared briefly to light lamps and lay a fire in the hearth. The knights accepted cups of heated wine and sighed in relief as they shed helms and gauntlets and lowered their hauberks to warm and dry themselves by the fire.

  After a short time, the old nuns returned bearing a tray of food, and the knights seated themselves and produced eating knives from their belts. As the cover was lifted from the food and aromas began to curl above the table and around their heads, the knights inhaled deeply.

  On the table between them sat a golden pie. Yellow golden. The color of sunflowers. In the vapors wafting through their heads came the unmistakable scents of saffron … and pork … and apples and plums … and cinnamon … and a peppery five-spice. Their mouths watered. They stared in amazement at each other for a moment, then dove into that beautiful, flaky, golden crust. With trembling hands, they scooped out slices and stuffed their mouths full.

  For a moment nothing about the knights moved, not even a jaw muscle.

  The abbess and the old sisters watched in growing concern as the men closed their eyes and turned their faces Heavenward. From low in their throats came guttural, animal sounds that caused one of the aged sisters to cross herself. The nuns’ uneasiness increased as the knights shivered, caught hard in the throes of gustatory shock. They looked to the abbess, who shoved her hands even farther up her sleeves and straightened her spine.

  The second mouthful softened the groans and gave them a rising and falling vibrato that was almost melodious. The third bite turned the musical groans to sighs, and by the fourth, the sighs had become helpless whimpers.

  “Ohhhh …” Sir Greeve swayed rhythmically.

  “Yesss …” Sir Axel clasped his hand to his well-upholstered heart and looked as if he were about to swoon. “Ohhh, yes …”

  By the time they scooped the last pieces from the pan, Sir Axel was humming and Sir Greeve was following along in close harmony. With those precious morsels in his hand, rotund Axel rose and turned from the table into an energetic step and twirl … staring at the pie as if it were his ladylove. Greeve burst into lilting “hey-nonny-nonnys” and began to keep time on the tabletop.

  Oblivious to the stares of the abbess and nuns, Axel whirled giddily and bowed to his piece of pie before each new bite. Greeve soon joined him, warbling a sonnet in which womanly charms were replaced by tender golden crust and feminine mystery by the irresistible lure of sweetmeats and spices. As they popped the final bites into their mouths the knights locked arms and whirled first one direction and then the other, laughing, their eyes bright and faces ruddy.

  They were still humming as they retrieved their helms and gauntlets, donned them, and bowed before the abbess with a flourish.

  “We would thank the cook, Reverend Mother,” Greeve said.

  “That won’t be necessary.” The abbess stood taller.

  “But a fine cook should be given his or her due,” Sir Axel asserted.

  “One cook is the same as another,” the abbess declared shortly. “They should all be grateful that God has given them hands with which to earn their bread and serve His glory. Now if you’re quite finished—”

  “Then, perhaps you would allow us to speak to your cook about this recipe.” Sir Greeve produced a small leather pouch that clinked sweetly as he jiggled the contents with his fingers. The abbess’s eyes widened as the knight dangled it before her. She tucked it into her sleeve before dashing their hopes.

  “Out of the question,” she proclaimed. “The sisters will show you out.”

  “But … but …” Sir Axel blinked and would have protested if Sir Greeve hadn’t grabbed him by the arm.

  “Our thanks for your hospitality, Reverend Mother.”

  As the knights exited the audience chamber, they paused by the table long enough to run their fingers round the empty tin one last time, look at each other, and sigh with unrequited curiosity.

  As they exited into the stormy night, the abbess relaxed visibly and examined the pouch they had given her. Inside were six large gold coins—enough to pay for an entire year of such meals!

  The sound of footsteps fast approaching caused the abbess to dump the coins back into the pouch and close her fingers protectively around it. When a young woman appeared in the doorway, the reverend mother cleared her throat and motioned to the old sisters to proceed with clearing the table.

  “They’re gone?” Julia of Childress brushed a few damp curls back from her forehead and the look of expectation drained from her heat-flushed f
ace.

  “They had to leave straightaway,” the abbess declared, thrusting the pouch of coins up her sleeve.

  “But I wanted to see how they—” Julia halted as the abbess’s gaze tightened with disapproval. “What did they say about the pie?”

  “I don’t recall them saying much of anything,” the abbess declared.

  The sisters halted in the midst of clearing the table and turned looks of dismay on the authority of their beloved order.

  “They made no remark at all?”

  “They ate, they drank, and they left a small donation. As usual.” The abbess adamantly ignored the old sisters’ accusing glowers. “Is supper ready?”

  “Yes, Reverend Mother,” she said, unable to hide her disappointment. “The same pie our visitors just ate. I was hoping to see if my new recipe—”

  “No matter,” the abbess declared with a dismissive wave. “I am certain it will be sufficient.”

  Julia of Childress paused along the colonnade surrounding the inner courtyard of the convent to watch the rain splash down into glossy puddles on the pavement. She felt just like one of those raindrops … being swallowed up … dissolved … dispersed into the larger life of the convent. She had seen plenty of raindrops plunge into puddles, in her time, but had yet to see a single one climb back out.

  She glanced up at the dim gray outlines of the columns that ringed the courtyard at the heart of the cloister. Beloved as the Convent of the Brides of Virtue was to her and to the many other maids it had rescued from penury, abandonment, and a life of deprivation, it was not a place a young woman of spirit and capability would wish to spend the rest of her mortal days. And if Julia of Childress was anything, she was spirited.

  It was precisely that “spirited nature”—as the more charitable of the good sisters termed it—that had gotten her into such trouble after her arrival at the convent. At the tender age of eight years old, she couldn’t help that her luckless father had died and she had been tossed into a convent where suddenly she had to curtsy and cross herself, and to set to memory scriptures and housekeeping calendars and scores of domestic procedures and household remedies.

  She spent many a day on her knees scrubbing and many a supperless night standing in the darkened chapter room reciting imperfectly learned lessons aloud to a dozing old sister. The constant labor and discipline were all but intolerable for a motherless child who had been allowed to run unfettered over her father’s meager and ill-tended holdings. And if she had to be miserable, she decided, she would share that misery with the good sisters who inflicted it on her.

  Then when she reached ten years old, they had in exasperation assigned her to the most arduous and dreaded of all duties in the convent: cooking.

  On the very first day of her duty there, she stood in the convent’s big, bustling, overheated kitchens … smelling cooking food and burning wood … grain dust and pungent onions and sage and fresh dill and sharp aged cheese and tangy vinegar … and fell utterly, irrevocably in love.

  From that day to this, she had spent her every spare moment in the kitchens, trying, testing, tasting, and mastering the culinary arts. She learned to read and write in four languages to uncover the secrets of recipes and ingredients from afar. She learned to cipher deftly to calculate amounts needed to enlarge and reduce recipes and make certain she was getting the most for the convent’s coin.

  The more she learned and developed her culinary skill, the more the convent and even the abbess herself came to see that her stubbornness was really “spirit,” her bossiness stemmed from a God-given gift of “authority,” and her penchant for flamming the local farmers out of produce and ingredients was merely a natural outgrowth of her Heaven-sent “resourcefulness.”

  Julia glanced over her shoulder at the door to the hall and the abbess’s audience chamber beyond. Then she took a deep breath and headed back to the kitchens, thinking of the smiles and sighs of contentment her savory meat pies would elicit in the dining hall. Between the fasting-obsessed church calendar and the fact of feeding a strictly female population—females being widely known to fare best on fish, greens, and barley—she seldom got to cook red meats. She had been itching to try some new ideas about roasting and spicing meat dishes, and a recent donation and a reprieve in the church’s dictums of denial finally gave her the chance.

  She entered the busy kitchen and stood overlooking the cooling tables on the open side of the kitchen. Twenty-two perfect, golden crusts were laid out before her. Twenty-one … the visitors had eaten one, she reminded herself. She leaned closer and inhaled. Juicy pork … plums and apples … saffron and cinnamon … and her very own special five-spice. She had mixed and seasoned the filling personally and rolled and shaped most of the crusts herself. She’d put her very heart into them, and as she stood looking at them, she knew they would tickle the palates and brighten the spirits of everyone who tried them. Even the crotchety old abbess. See if they didn’t.

  God knew, the sisters of the Brides of Virtue loved her cooking.

  She expelled a heavy breath.

  But did any of them love her?

  Chapter Two

  The Feast of Pentecost had come and gone, and the full spring sun had driven away the rains and warmed the land into full, fertile glory. Everywhere life was stirring: Sown fields were sprouting, cows were freshening, town burghers were preparing for hot fairs, and travelers were abroad on the roads and camping in the edges of woods … like the woods overlooking the Convent of the Brides of Virtue …

  “We’re in luck, Your Lordship!” Sir Axel came puffing up the hill and charged into the undergrowth that hid his liege lord, his friend Sir Greeve, and a dozen well-supplied men at arms. Spotting his lord peering through the branches at the stone-walled convent nestled in the valley below, he braced against a bush to steady himself. “It’s a feast day.”

  “Feast day?” Griffin, Count of Grandaise, turned to his rotund, thickly cloaked spy with narrowed eyes. “Today belongs to no saint.”

  “Not a saint’s feast, seigneur. The Duke of Avalon visits to thank the abbess and convent for something or other. He’s brought meat, and there’s to be a special dinner for the duke and a distribution of alms.”

  Griffin of Grandaise turned that over in his mind.

  “Alms? They’re feeding the poor?”

  “Yes, indeed. That’s why those folk are clustered around the rear gate.”

  “How are we fortunate that those poor wretches get to eat alms bread?”

  “Not just alms bread, milord.” Axel parted the branches nearby and pointed to the knot of people milling around the rear gate. “They’re waiting for the duke’s leavings to be distributed. The sisters will give out all that’s left.”

  “It’s pure providence, milord,” Sir Greeve declared, peering past Axel’s shoulder toward the convent. “The duke will occupy the abbess … there will be men about the convent … and with the confusion of the poor milling about …”

  “It would be the perfect opportunity to slip inside and have a look at this cook who’s woven a spell on the pair of you,” Griffin concluded, scowling.

  Five weeks had passed since two of his knights stumbled fainting from hunger into this enclave of church-pledged females and came out intoxicated with gustatory pleasure. The pair rushed home to Grandaise to tell him about their find and had talked of little else since. Worse … every time they described that pie, the crust was a bit more golden and delectable and the meat a bit more tender and the spices a bit more subtle or bold or intriguing …

  And every time he heard them wax eloquent about the experience he wanted to put his fist through something.

  Food, his men knew full well, was a sore subject with the Count of Grandaise. He never got enough. And what he did get never satisfied him. He could barely stomach half of what his beleaguered kitchens produced, and rather than force himself to consume common fare—which was as unpalatable to him as spoiled or soured food was to others—he often went hungry. And when he went
hungry, his mood darkened and he earned the sobriquet that he had inherited along with his title from his grandfather: the Beast of Grandaise.

  It was a curse of his lineage, passed down from his grandfather, who raised him after his father died young in battle: a heightened sensitivity of smell that made ordinary food seem the equivalent of kitchen slops. He could distinguish a dash of pepper in a whole vat of stew … a single stalk of celery in an entire batch of stuffing … or a taint of vinegar in a barrel days before wine began to go “off.” The scent of a dusting of mold, a hint of souring, or even the fermenting spoilage of a single apple in a barrel could ruin his appetite and linger sickeningly in his head for the better part of a day.

  “Go, milord, and you’ll have food fit for Heaven itself,” Greeve urged.

  “Divine,” Axel added anxiously. “The abbess herself thinks so.”

  “That’s why she guards the cook like a hawk.” Greeve’s head bobbed. “Wouldn’t even let us set eyes on her. We had to spread a bit of coin about the village to learn she existed at all.”

  Neither of the devoted knights broached the question uppermost in their minds: What would happen if Lord Griffin decided the cook was all Axel and Greeve had said and insisted on having her? Trading anxious glances, they forced themselves to set such worries aside. It was enough that they’d managed to lighten his grim mood and turn his thoughts from the impossible—escaping the marriage the king had just commanded he make—to the merely difficult—wrenching a fine cook from a canny abbess’s hands.

  They and the dozen other men who had accompanied the Count of Grandaise to court and then farther north to this isolated enclave of females held their breaths as he turned and straightened to his full six-plus feet of height. They braced, expecting a blast, but he merely looked them over and demanded:

  “Which of you has the worst-looking cloak?”

  The ragged folk gathered at the rear gate of the convent jealously guarded their places in the line waiting for the distribution of alms. Nobody fed the poor like the Convent of the Brides of Virtue. There was no keeping back of the choicer morsels and reusing them for stew or pottage or broth and sops. The bread given out was not coarse “alms bread,” but cuttings from the same soft, white flour loaves the sisters gave their guests. Sometimes the sisters set up tables in the rear yard and invited the poor and hungry to sit, and even mended their ragged garments for them as they ate. It was charity at its finest. And the poor and wretched, some of whom had been waiting since sunrise for a taste of a rare meat-day alms, were both hungry and contentious.