“My mother...” she began.
“You needn’t—”
“My mother was Jourdain’s mistress.” This, of course, hardly shocked him, given her illegitimacy, but to speak of it appeared to distress her greatly. It suddenly dawned on Thorne that this might be the first time she had said those words, had ever admitted out loud that her mother had not been a baroness, but the mistress of a baron. Realizing this made him appreciate how hard this admission was for her, and why she had felt the need to steel herself with strong drink in order to say the words.
“Her name was Adela,” she said. “Her father was a Paris wine merchant. He sold her to Jourdain for a handful of silver when she was very young.” She swallowed some brandy. “I know that now. I know everything, the whole horrible... everything.” She drained her cup. “I look back on my childhood—the first ten years, anyway—and wonder how I could have been so naive, so—” she lifted her cup to her mouth, found it empty, and lowered it, “happy. I was happy. Life was so simple... until I discovered the truth...”
* * *
In the summer of Martine’s tenth year, she began to notice the same name cropping up repeatedly in her mother’s prayers.
“Mama,” the child finally asked, “who’s Odelina?”
Adela knelt at their wooden chest, lighting the six rows of foul-smelling tallow candles that she had arranged on top of it. She looked up, and in her high, girlish voice, said, “Odelina is a lady who’s been very ill for a very long time.”
Even at five and twenty years, Adela still looked very much the child, with her slender arms, small breasts, and enormous eyes. Martine, although just as fair in coloring, had her sire’s height and presence, and seemed older than her years.
“So you’re praying that she’ll get better?”
Grimly Adela shook her head. “I’m praying that she’ll die.”
Martine gasped. “Die! Why? Because she’s in pain and you want to end her suffering?”
“Nay,” Adela replied, returning to her candles. “I care naught for her suffering.”
And then she said something that changed everything. She said, “I want her to die so I can marry her husband. The lady Odelina is your papa’s wife.”
Martine gaped at her mother. “But you’re Papa’s wife! Aren’t you?”
Adela looked at Martine with disbelief in her eyes. “If I were his wife, would we be living here? Barons don’t keep their wives in little clay huts in the middle of the woods. They keep them in their castles. Didn’t you know that?”
Martine merely shook her head, dumbstruck. To Martine, her father was a glorious, golden-haired giant in furs and silks who came galloping through the woods on a white stallion when she least expected him.
She would shriek with delight as he dismounted and lifted her into the air, whirling her around and around before squeezing her in his massive arms and pressing a little trinket into her hands. For Jourdain of Rouen never arrived without gifts of some sort for his daughter and her young mother. Silken ribbons, tiny gold rings, vials of aromatic oils, polished steel looking glasses with ivory frames, silver combs, beaded slippers... Their dark little wattle-and-daub cottage seemed to fill up with these dainty treasures as the years passed.
Martine adored him, heart and soul. He brought laughter and excitement into their dreary lives. He was magnificent. He was her papa.
What a change came over Mama when Papa came to visit! Her eyes lit up as she flew around the little cottage attending to his needs—hanging up his mantle, unlacing his boots, fetching him ale and bread and meat.
Once he was rested and his belly filled, there would be other needs of his to attend to, and Martine would be sent outside to forage in the woods or swim in the lake, or, if it was raining, upstairs to the little loft where she slept at night. From below, she would hear the crackle of straw in Adela’s mattress, and other sounds—his groans, her breathless cries—sounds that frightened and confused her.
“No, no, Martine, your papa would never hurt me,” Mama always assured her after he left. “He fills me. He makes me whole. Without him I’m an empty shell.”
Martine watched her mother light the last candle, listened to her incomprehensible murmurs. Every time she heard the name Odelina, she cringed inside. “It’s wrong, Mama! It’s wrong to wish for someone’s death. It’s almost like murder. God will punish you!”
Her mother rose to her feet, her blue eyes wide, their pupils tiny black pinpoints. “I’ll gladly risk the flames of hell if only my prayers are answered.” With a quivering arm she swept the candles onto the earthen floor, where they sputtered and died. “I would spend eternity writhing in agony in exchange for just one day as the rightful wife of my lord Jourdain!”
Martine ran from the cottage and swam in the lake until the sky grew black and the water cold.
It was shortly thereafter that Adela ordered the material for her wedding gown, yards of luxurious shot silk the crisp green of apples in late summer, before they ripen. It took her many days to sew the voluminous tunic with its long, flowing sleeves, weeks to complete the embroidery and beading. Martine had never seen a gown like it; it was dazzling, extraordinary.
The morning she finished it, one of Jourdain’s men arrived with a load of firewood. The lady Odelina, he said, had ascended to heaven that very morning, God rest her weary soul.
“He arrived just as I was sewing on the last bead,” Adela told her daughter as rode away. “‘Tis a good omen. A lucky sign for the marriage, don’t you think?” Soon, she said, her lord Jourdain would come riding out of the woods and carry them back to his castle. Martine bathed and dressed and brushed her hair, dizzy with anticipation.
But that day passed, and the next, and yet more, and he didn’t come. His servants no longer arrived at their door with deliveries of foodstuffs, firewood, cloth, and other household necessities. Weeks went by. Martine felt lost and confused. She adored her papa. It perplexed her that they hadn’t come for them, or at least sent the provisions they’d always depended on.
Autumn came, and it was a wet, chilly autumn that year. They used up the wood and ran out of food. Martine collected roots and berries in the woods, but Adela spent all her waking hours in fevered, tearful prayer. The child knew without being told that she and her mother would not survive the winter.
One afternoon Adela came back from a trip to the village, sat at the window, and stared wordlessly into the woods.
“Talk to me,” Martine begged. “What happened? Is it about Papa? Did someone tell you something? Is he sick? Is he—is he dead? Please talk to me!”
She still sat there when the child went up to her loft that night. But when Martine came down in the morning, her mother was gone. Her clothes still hung on their hooks, all except the new green tunic.
Martine looked everywhere for her. She even went to the village all by herself and asked if anyone had seen her since the day before, but no one had. While walking back, she passed the lake, and that’s when she saw, floating on its breeze-rippled surface, the apple-green silk of her mother’s wedding gown.
Why had Mama thrown it into the lake? It would be ruined, and it was so beautiful, and had taken so long to make. She waded into the water and tried to pull it out, but she’d been weakened by hunger, and it seemed to be caught on something. At the sound of whistling, she looked up. A farmer, a man known to her, led his ox along the path at the edge of the woods.
“Can you help me?” she called. “Mama’s wedding gown is in the lake!”
“Her wedding gown?” he said. “Who’s she going to marry, then?”
“My father. Baron Jourdain of Rouen.”
The farmer laughed incredulously. “Child, His Lordship remarried last week. Her name is Blanche. Thirteen years old.” He shrugged. “Some men like them young.”
Martine stood in the icy water and watched him continue down the path, her emaciated body racked with shivers.
It would have been better, far better, had Papa been dead
, as she had feared. That would have hurt, but it wouldn’t have approached the pain of knowing that he had turned his back on them, abandoned them. They meant nothing to him, less than nothing, if he would so casually cast them aside for this Blanche. This was what Adela had found out in the village, this was the cause of her despair. This was why she had discarded her wedding dress.
She shouldn’t have. It was exquisite, and she’d worked so hard on it. She deserved to keep it and wear it, even if Jourdain didn’t want to marry her.
Filling her lungs with air, Martine dove fully clothed into the lake to retrieve the dress. The water was brutally cold. Green silk billowed beneath the surface, surrounding her and enclosing her. With flailing arms she pushed it aside.
What she saw then would haunt her and torment her for the rest of her days. It was the face of a monster, the face of death, the face of terror.
It was the face of her mother, bobbing in the hellish cold mere inches from her own, her clouded eyes staring sightlessly into the wide and horrified eyes of her daughter. She looked like a demon from hell, all swollen and purple, her mouth agape, revealing a distended black tongue.
Martine gagged and choked, a blinding shriek of disbelief filling her skull. She tried to surface, but the green silk enveloped her like a cocoon, and she clawed and struggled against it. She saw the rope around her mother’s neck, and the sack of rocks it was tied to, and realized that she had died by her own hand, a grievous and unforgivable sin.
That revelation was her last coherent thought for some time. When her senses returned, she was sitting crouched in a corner of her cottage, her arms wrapped around her updrawn knees, listening to a man outside calling her name. Her clothes and hair were wet, and her throat felt painfully raw; she realized she must have been screaming. Her eyes, however, were dry, so she knew she hadn’t cried. But then, she had never been much for tears.
The man walked in through the door and frowned at her. It was the local priest, fat little Father Tancred.
Without preface, he said, “We can’t bury the body, I hope you realize that. Wouldn’t be proper, seeing as how she took her own life. She’s been dragged into the woods and left for the wolves. They’ll make short work of her, don’t you worry.”
Martine just stared, her throat far too sore for speech.
Father Tancred pursed his lips. “Don’t bother praying for her, it won’t do no good. She’s roasting in hell this very minute, and nothing you do can save her. If you must pray, pray for your own salvation, seeing as how you’ve got her wicked blood in your veins.”
Raising his eyebrows at her lack of response, he continued. “It isn’t safe for you to stay here all alone. Not all men are good and kind, like me. There’s some that’d take advantage of a girl like you. You know what I mean, don’t you?”
Martine didn’t so much as blink.
Nodding, the priest said, “Aye, you know what I mean. And then, afterward, you’d be no better than your mother. You know she died a whore, don’t you?”
He inspected her up and down with a look of disgust, and Martine considered how she must appear, skinny and hollow-eyed, her loose hair a damp, tangled mane. The priest lifted his black skullcap to smooth his own greasy yellow hair, then glanced out the window. Martine followed his line of sight to a curtained litter waiting in the harsh noon sun in front of the cottage. A woman’s bejeweled hand parted the brocade drapery and then quickly let it fall closed.
Father Tancred cleared his throat. “All them things the baron’s given you and your mum over the years, all them rings and bracelets and fancy baubles?” he glanced unerringly toward the trunk in the corner, its lid covered with half-melted candles. “You know there’s brigands that’d slit your throat for just one of them little pretties, don’t you? You’re not safe here. You’d best be getting along.”
He waited, but Martine made no move to rise.
“Get along,” he repeated, waving his plump hand. “Scat! Go!”
Where am I supposed to go? Martine wondered. This is my home. I have nowhere else to go.
The priest looked back toward the litter and shrugged. The pale hand with its many rings beckoned him impatiently and then yanked the curtain closed.
Licking his lips nervously, he edged toward the door. “You mark my words,” he said. “It’s not safe here for you. You be gone by nightfall, or most likely by tomorrow you’ll be burning in hell right alongside your mum.”
Alone once more, Martine rested her head on her knees and closed her eyes. For a long time she thought about what it would feel like when she died. Having her throat slit would be quick, but it would hurt. Starvation took a long time, but as she well knew, it had its own kind of peculiar, grinding pain.
But drowning—struggling for air, waiting for your lungs to fill with water—was inconceivably horrible to her. How her mother must have suffered, even though she chose her own fate. Despite Father Tancred’s command, she did try to pray for Adela’s soul, but found that no words would come from her throat.
Thinking she could hear the wails of the damned as they agonized in hell, she clapped her hands tightly over her ears.
Slowly she uncovered them. It wasn’t the damned, merely the whinny of horses. She opened her eyes. By the long shadows outside she could tell it was already late afternoon. She couldn’t see the horses, but she could hear the footsteps of a man on the packed earth outside the cottage.
Quick as a squirrel, she darted to her feet. Grabbing the big meat knife from its hook, she scrambled up the ladder to her loft and half buried herself in straw in the far corner.
She heard him enter the cottage, and then came a thump as he laid something heavy on their little trestle table. She sensed his curiosity as he looked around. The ladder squeaked as he stepped on the first rung, and then the next. Martine braced herself, the knife handle gripped tightly in both sweaty fists.
A black skullcap appeared, half covering a head of pale blond hair. The child tensed, ready to spring. And then she saw his face.
Martine sucked in her breath. It wasn’t Father Tancred at all. This priest was young, as young as her mother had been, and handsome.
He paused on the ladder, calmly inspecting first the knife and then her face. Finally he nodded. “My lady.”
He mocked her. Martine’s grip on the knife handle tightened.
As if he had read her mind, he said, “You’re the daughter of a baron, are you not? I only meant to show respect.”
He descended the ladder. “But if you’d prefer,” he continued from below, “I shall call you Martine.” She heard him unbuckle something—a leather satchel?—and then begin to empty things onto the table. “And you may call me Rainulf.”
Not “Father Rainulf”? Thought Martine.
“Just Rainulf,” the priest said, again suggesting that he had plucked her thoughts right out of her head. “There’s no need for formality between brother and sister.”
Between... For a few dazed moments, Martine sat perfectly still in her cocoon of straw. Between brother and sister?
Finally she pushed the straw aside and, holding the knife at the ready, crept forward just far enough to peer over the edge of the loft.
Rainulf looked up at her. He was tall, and stood with the easy grace of the aristocrat. In one hand he held an apple. Behind him, on the table, were more apples, a loaf of white bread, a wedge of cheese, some pastries, some dried fruit, and a wineskin. Her mouth watered instantly at the sight of all that food, and she could do nothing to keep her eyes from widening in amazement.
“Will you join me for some supper?” Rainulf asked.
Biting her lip, she looked from the priest to the food and back again, then backed up, shaking her head.
After a thoughtful pause, he said, “My horse is very fond of apples. You don’t mind if I step outside to give him one?” She didn’t respond, and presently he turned and left.
Martine stared at the food for some time. Then, with her eye on the door and a tight gri
p on the knife, she climbed down the ladder and sidled up to the window. Outside, the priest stood with his back to her, feeding the apple to his chestnut stallion. Nearby had been tethered a petite gray mare and a packhorse to which had been harnessed a stretcher-litter. Bound to the litter was something wrapped up in bleached white linen... a shrouded corpse. Her mother? But they had dragged her mother into the woods. He must have retrieved the body and brought it here. Why?
Although her mind reeled with questions, the ripe aroma of the cheese soon drew her to the table. With her eyes on the man in the front yard, and her hand still clutching the knife, she picked up the wedge and bit off a generous mouthful. Its taste flooded her senses, and she took another bite before swallowing the first. The pastries tempted her next, and she grabbed one and made short work of it, and then an apple. Dropping the knife, she ripped off a hunk of bread with trembling hands and ate it greedily, following that with a handful of chewy little figs. She uncorked the wineskin and squeezed it into her mouth, finding it filled with sweet apple cider. She gulped it down breathlessly, then reached once more for the cheese.
It was then that her stomach, empty for so long and now so swiftly engorged, began to heave in protest. Fingers of icy cold crawled up her back, and her head swam sickeningly. She staggered on quaking legs to her mother’s narrow rope bed, dropped to her knees, and fumbled beneath it for the chamber pot. Hunching over the clay vessel, she whimpered as her stomach contracted.
Suddenly he was there, kneeling behind her, gathering her hair with one hand while the other firmly cradled her head. She groaned in despair, fighting the inevitable.
“Easy, now,” he said soothingly. “Let it come.”
It did, of course. Afterward, he sat her on the bed and patted her face with a damp cloth. “We must get you into some dry clothes, and then you can try eating again, slowly this time.”
He took a fresh kirtle off its hook, brought it to her, and squatted down so that their heads were level. Softly he said, “I know you found your mother’s body. ‘Tis little wonder you’ve been struck dumb. It’s all right with me if you don’t talk. I’m a teacher, so I’m quite capable of carrying on a perfectly adequate conversation with no help from anyone.”
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