“Sir Thorne!” Felda exclaimed. “Is that you?”
He didn’t look at all like himself, that was for certain. A dark beard concealed the lower half of his face, the features of which had been sharpened by weight loss. He wore a tunic of humble homespun, probably borrowed from one of the larger lay brothers. His right arm was immobilized in a sling, his left draped over the crutch on which he leaned. Speechless, Martine gaped down at his leg, still splinted and heavily bandaged. Leaning the crutch on the end of the bench, he sat slowly and carefully, his clenched jaw betraying the pain even this simple maneuver caused him.
“You walked all the way here from the infirmary?” Martine said. “Through the snow? With that leg? You’re mad.”
He smiled. Leaning toward her, he murmured, “If I’m mad, so be it. I understand some madmen are even happy.”
The brothers began their chanting, and Martine turned back toward the altar, her face suffused with heat. His seemingly innocent words, meaningless to Felda and Cleva, were in fact words he had spoken to her on the mossy bank of River Blackburn, while he was buried deep inside her. They were clever, those words, conjuring up for her, as he surely knew they would, the heat and intimacy of their lovemaking, the ecstasy that they had known together.
Put him out of your mind, she commanded herself. You must put him out of your mind... Why had he come here? she wondered. To see her? It was cruel, considering how hard it was for her to forget him, to forget the passion that sparked between them, the need...
All through the interminable mass, Martine felt his hot blue eyes burning into her. Dear God, would she ever be free of this longing, this empty place inside her with the shape of Thorne Falconer?
When the mass ended, Martine rose to leave with the others, but Thorne gripped her shoulder firmly and lowered her to her seat. He left his hand there until the church was empty save for the two of them and a young monk at the altar snuffing out candles. The Saxon removed his hand and they sat in silence, although the distance between them vibrated with unspoken words. Breathing in the pungent incense that lingered in the cold air, she watched the young monk, no more than a boy, move in and out of the hazy ribbons of sunlight that played over the altar. Without the press of surrounding bodies, she felt the full chill of the unheated winter air, even through her sable-lined winter cloak. Her gloves did little to keep her hands warm, so she tunneled them into the sleeves of her tunic.
Turning toward Thorne, she said, “Don’t you attend mass in the chapel off the infirmary?”
“Usually.” He said no more until the boy finished his duties and left, and then he leaned toward her. “But I’d wanted to attend it here, so I’ve been working on being able to walk.” He sighed heavily. “I had to see you. I haven’t been able to think of anything else.”
She turned her back to him again, struggling to maintain her distance, emotionally, from this man who wielded such irresistibly seductive power over her, holding her captive to the yearning that seemed to simmer beneath the surface of his words.
He reached out with one finger to touch the underside of her chin. A tingle of desire raced through her, and she sucked in her breath, awed at the capacity of one warm, caressing fingertip to heat the blood in her veins, to grab hold of her heart and squeeze it until it hurt to breathe.
She wanted him, nay, needed him, with a craving so instantaneous and so powerful that she had to close her eyes and breathe deeply of the cold, spicy air to regain her composure... to remember why she mustn’t let him do this, mustn’t let him make her want him. That he still had the power to do so, after all that had transpired between them, shamed her deeply, despite Brother Matthew’s insistence that it shouldn’t.
The struggle to resist him challenged her will. His touch, although surely calculated to serve his own purposes, felt so human, so warm, so redolent with promise. Were she to allow it, she had no doubt that, despite his injuries, he would take her hand and lead her to some dark and private corner and claim her body as fiercely and passionately as he had done at the riverbank. She could almost feel him inside her, and her body pulsed around the void within.
“Will you be here tomorrow?” he asked, stroking her throat ever so lightly with the tips of his fingers.
She bit her lip, arresting the words that leaped from her heart... Yes, I’ll be here. I want to be with you, to talk to you, to see the hunger in your eyes as they look at me, to feel your hands on me... Yes, I’ll be here.
She was susceptible to his skillful persuasions, and he knew it; how could he fail to, after having seduced her twice? Now he thought he could make her desire him again anytime he wanted. How close that was to the truth, and how she hated her weakness.
She might be weak, but she was also proud, and now she would use that pride to protect herself.
She met his eyes. “I won’t be here, Thorne.”
The light behind his eyes dimmed. He nodded, his mouth set.
She said, “I’m glad you’re doing so well, but you’ve still got weeks—nay, months—of healing ahead of you. You should stay off your feet as much as possible. You certainly shouldn’t be walking here all the way from the infirmary.” This time he made no move to stop her when she stood and went to the aisle.
Her back to him, she said, “You’re best off attending mass in the infirmary chapel.” As she turned and made her way back through the nave to the rear door, she thought she heard him say her name, but she kept walking and didn’t turn around.
Chapter 19
“Mayhap she’s incubating a demon,” suggested Father Simon, nodding toward Estrude’s grotesquely swollen belly as she lay writhing and moaning in her bed.
Bernard glanced at the priest, thinking, The little worm is serious. Yet even Godfrey, nodding in slack-jawed amazement, seemed to believe it. Of course, he was pathetically gullible when he was drunk, which was all the time lately. With his mouth hanging open like that, and that dumbfounded stare of his, he looked for all the world like the village idiot. All Bernard could think was, The day you start to drool, old man, is the day I smother you in your sleep.
“Kill me,” Estrude begged for the hundredth time that day.
Now, she’s the one who needs a pillow over the face, thought her husband, not because a quick death would be a merciful end to her suffering, but rather because the sight of her disgusted him beyond measure. In recent months her skin, jaundiced and covered with mysterious sores, had shrunken down over her bones, the flesh beneath seeming almost to dissolve in the process. Her face, with its wild, terrified eyes and lips stretched back over too-large teeth, was the face of a living corpse. Her arms and legs were like twigs, a curious contrast to the enormous belly that grew and grew and grew, like an overripe fruit waiting to burst.
Would it indeed rupture if she waited too long to die? he wondered idly. And if so, what would come out? A horned minion of Satan, as Father Simon speculated? While his wife thrashed and clawed at her bedclothes, Bernard envisioned such a creature springing from her womb in an explosion of blood, and chuckled at the sheer primitive absurdity of it.
No, it was no demon growing within his wife’s body, but neither was it a babe, of that he was fairly certain. Estrude’s belly, but six months into her confinement, had swelled to outlandish proportions. The midwife assured him that twin babes at full term could not have distended it so. No, it was some malady or other that had done this to her, and not a pregnancy, normal or demonic. The bitch really was barren, after all, worse luck.
On the bright side, she’d be dead soon. He could start over with a new wife, someone young and healthy and capable of producing heirs. He’d keep this new one on a short leash and let her feel the sting of his belt right from the start, not give her time to grow insolent, as Estrude had. And it might serve him well to closet her in the bedchamber, where he’d always know where to find her. He’d have a door built, one that locked from the outside. This time he’d do it right.
Of course, in contemplating a second marriag
e, he was obliged to confront the same irksome problem that had forced him to go all the way to Flanders for a bride the first time. Although a full twenty years had passed, he knew it didn’t matter how long ago it was, or that she was just a twopenny whore, or that she deserved what she got and more; the incident had plagued him ever since. It was his own damn fault for losing his head and doing her right there in the brothel, for making such a mess of it and leaving her on her pallet for them to find, knowing he’d been her last customer. His uncurbed rage had not only been unwise, it had been vulgar, uncivilized—and that shamed him, for he was, after all, a civilized man.
“Kill me,” Estrude pleaded as she kicked and tore at her hair. “Kill me. Please!”
It was a tempting notion, that of pressing a pillow to her face in the dead of night, but an ill-advised one. A keep was a place with no secrets. Were it not, he would have eased her passage from the world—and his sire’s as well—long before this. But the risk of being found out was too great, and, as far as Estrude was concerned, quite unnecessary, considering she’d be dead within days.
Edmond’s voice rose from the courtyard below. Godfrey leaned out the window and called him inside.
How proud his little brother had been of himself after cutting his teeth with that little whore of Nan’s, that Emeline. In truth, Bernard had found the incident somewhat flattering, for of course Edmond had only sought to emulate what he himself had done two decades before. But then the boy had tried the same business with the lady Martine, and that Bernard had found less than amusing. Edmond’s childish enthusiasm was ever unfettered by discretion, and that could be a dangerous thing; it led to sloppiness, and, as Bernard well knew, sloppiness led to getting caught. Had he wanted to be rid of his own wife, Edmond should have had the patience to plan the act in advance, make it look like an accident.
“Kill me. Dear God, kill me...”
He’d often been tempted to plan such an accident for Estrude, but fool that he was, he kept thinking his seed might eventually take root in the poor soil of her womb. He wouldn’t make the same mistake next time. At six and thirty, it was high time he had sons. If his next wife didn’t conceive within a year, he’d do what he should have done with Estrude long before this; he’d tell her to pack up a picnic hamper and take her on an outing to Weald Forest, just the two of them. Fingering his little jeweled eating knife through the pouch on his belt, he smiled as he imagined the exquisite punishments his imaginary bride’s infertility would earn her. He wouldn’t even have to bury her. He could, in fact, garner a certain measure of sympathy by claiming that she’d been tortured and raped by bandits before his very eyes.
“Ah, Edmond,” Godfrey said.
Bernard turned to find his brother in the doorway, gawking at Estrude with an expression of repugnance. “I’m not going in there.”
The baron followed his younger son into the hallway. Bernard could just make out his sire’s words, thick with drink and muffled by the leather curtain that separated them. “She’s dying, son.”
“Well, I wish she’d hurry up about it. Jesus!”
“I’ve got a problem now, boy. No grandsons, and no good prospects for getting any. Geneva’s been cast aside, and Bernard will be a widower soon. That leaves you.”
A moment of silence. “Oh, no,” Edmond moaned. “She’s a witch, Pa! She’s a fucking witch!”
“You’ll ride to St. Dunstan’s tomorrow and bring her back.”
Father Simon looked toward Bernard and raised his eyebrows.
“I won’t do it,” Edmond said.
“You will! You’re my vassal to command same as anyone else within my domain, and you’ll do as I say or I’ll put you in a monastery for the rest of your natural days. You hear me, boy?”
It was an unusually vehement speech from the old man, considering how weak and ineffectual he’d become. But then, he’d always been passionate on the subject of grandsons. Another long pause, and then Edmond mumbled assent.
“And you will live with her as man and wife until she bears a son. After that, you may do as you wish.”
Christ, thought Bernard. At this rate, Edmond will end up with heirs before I do.
* * *
He’d thought he was well rid of her. He’d thought he’d never have to set eyes on the witch again, much less live with her.
Squeezing some more wine down his throat, Edmond kicked his bay stallion simply for the need to kick something. It lurched forward, throwing him back hard, feet in the air. Only by grabbing the saddle quickly did he manage to regain his seat. He pulled back sharply on the reins, and the bay snorted testily.
He’d not only have to live with her, he’d have to bed her—or try to. Who’s to say she wouldn’t use sorcery on him again, or sneak him another dose of poison? For all he knew, she had a spell to make his cock shrivel up and fall off! She might even kill him this time.
He looked around blearily in an effort to confirm that he was still headed west, toward St. Dunstan’s. It was noon, so the sun was of no help. The snow-dusted terrain looked unfamiliar, and for the first time he noticed how steep it was. To his left, the rocky hillside dropped off precipitously, making his vision reel and his stomach turn over. The wineskin slipped out of his fingers and tumbled down the hill, bouncing over boulders for quite some time before disappearing in the woods below. No great loss, that. It was almost empty, and he had another.
Aye, but ‘twould be better to be dead than to have to take that woman back, he thought, uncorking the second skin and filling his mouth. Everyone knew about her. Bernard even told him there was a rumor circulating in Hastings that she’d cast a spell on the pilot of the Lady’s Slipper after summoning a storm on his boat!
He nudged his mount into a trot, drinking as he rode. He began to see double, but he didn’t mind. Being drunk kept him from feeling the cold, not to mention taking the edge off this distasteful errand. But for the wine, he didn’t think he could do it.
If his wife didn’t kill him, more than likely the Saxon would. He’d sworn on the baby Jesus’ saddling clothes that he would do away with Edmond slowly and painfully if he laid a finger on the witch! But what right had that upstart woodsman’s son to order him away from her? She was his wife, damn it. His lord and sire had commanded him to get her with child, and he would, by God, if he had to tie her to the bed to do it!
Again he kicked his mount, and again the stallion raced forward, its hooves skittering over the loose gravel that covered the narrow hillside track. Dropping the wineskin, he jerked back on the reins, whereupon the enraged bay bucked and squealed. In a panic over losing his seat, Edmond grabbed for the animal’s mane, but it was too late. Off he flew, sailing over the side of the hill and rolling roughly over boulders and fallen trees until he finally landed with bone-crushing force on an outcropping of rock.
He looked up, squinting into the sun and listening to the receding hoofbeats of his mount. Christ, my head’s on backward, he thought. And then a veil of red obscured his vision, and his mouth filled with blood, and he could no longer feel his body.
His last thoughts were, She’s a more powerful witch than I thought. She’s killed me before I even got there.
* * *
Standing at the window in the hall of the prior’s lodge, Martine withdrew the sheet of parchment from her tunic and began to reread it.
5 March 1160
From Bernard of Harford to his sister by marriage, Martine of Rouen.
Know, my lady sister, that much has transpired recently of which I am obliged, with a great heaviness of heart, to inform you. It is with the utmost sorrow that I transmit herewith the news that your husband, my most beloved brother, Edmond, has passed from the world. Would that my melancholy account ended there, however, it appears that my dear wife, Estrude, gravely ill these many months, is destined to join him soon.
“Martine.”
She turned toward the voice, Thorne’s voice. He stood in the door of the stairway, dressed in homespun as he had b
een when she saw him in church a fortnight ago. This morning, however, he was again clean-shaven. He no longer wore the sling, but he had his crutch with him.
“Sir Thorne.” She noticed in his eyes a flicker of disappointment at the formal address.
“Brother Matthew told me about Edmond.”
She nodded and looked down at the letter.
He said, “I won’t pretend I’m sorry.”
“Then neither will I.” They met each other’s eyes. He always knows what’s in my heart, she thought. That’s the source of his power over me. That’s why he can bend me to his will. I must try to be strong. I must close my heart to him and strip him of that power.
Thorne frowned. “Matthew tells me you’re riding back to Harford today for Edmond’s funeral.”
“Yes, I’ve just finished packing.” She nodded toward the satchel in which she’d stowed a change of clothes and a jug of claret mixed with sleeping draft, which she hoped might soothe Estrude’s torment. “I’ll only be gone for a day or two. I’m leaving Loki here.”
He closed in on her. “I don’t think you should go.”
She backed up. “Edmond is dead. I needn’t hide behind St. Dunstan’s walls anymore. Felda and I are riding back today.”
“Without an escort?”
“No harm will come to us.”
He sighed. “If you insist on going, I’m going with you.”
She straightened her back. “You’re in no condition to ride. And there’s certainly no need.”
“It matters not what condition I’m in, and there certainly is a need.”
She planted her fists on her hips. “You don’t understand. I don’t want you to come.”
“But I do understand,” he said soberly. “I know you’d rather I left you alone. I know you find my company... distressing, and that’s Matthew’s urged you to stay away from me. But the fact remains that the journey to Harford isn’t safe for you, and neither, necessarily, is Harford Castle itself.” He rested a hand on the hilt of his sword. “I swore an oath to your brother to take care of you, and whether you like it or not, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
Lords of Conquest Boxed Set Page 165
