Simon’s Lady

by Julie Tetel Andresen

  “Simon of Beresford is leading those troops,” Auncilla’s colleague added. “But, of course, you know that.”

  “Of course,” Gwyneth said calmly.

  “But the real news is that reports of a traitor within the castle are circulating!” Auncilla continued with relish. “And a variety of names are being advanced, including—”

  Auncilla was promptly nudged to silence by the third serving woman, who had, apparently, a greater sense of propriety than her colleagues. “Repeating idle gossip,” this proper woman said, sniffing in displeasure, “leads only to mischief.”

  Gwyneth noted the rumors. For no reason she could name, she thought immediately of Cedric of Valmey. To the proper woman she said, “You are quite right to discourage idle gossip.” The woman accepted her approbation with a superior nod. Gwyneth squeezed Auncilla’s arm sympathetically and said, “But it is so enjoyable to tell stories, is it not?”

  Upon arriving in the hall, she was satisfied that Auncilla’s prediction that the courtiers had fresh topics to absorb their attention was, at least in part, true. Only a few curious eyes turned toward her when she entered. She scanned the hall and noted Beresford on the other side, deep in conversation with several knights. He did not look up, and she was not going to make a fool of herself by paying unseemly attention to him. She noticed Geoffrey of Senlis standing not far from Beresford. When her eye met his, he bowed ceremoniously.

  She caught her breath at the expression on his face, nodded her head slightly in return and continued to survey the room. Adela was moving calmly but continuously from group to group. Cedric of Valmey was nowhere to be seen, which signified nothing at all, while Rosalyn was holding her own little court near one of the fireplaces, laughing with knights, chatting with ladies and generally dispensing her wintry charm among all.

  Just as Gwyneth was completing her study of the hall and wondering what course to take next, Johanna stepped to her side. “You must be hungry, my newest cousin,” she said, smiling at her kindly and gesturing her toward the table, where few people remained at their trenchers. “And so am I, for the length of morning mass always seems to raise my appetite. May I join you?”

  Nothing could have pleased Gwyneth better than to see a friendly face just then and to have companionship for the morning meal. A possibly awkward moment had been effortlessly bridged. She accepted Johanna’s offer with pleasure and a trace of relief.

  Johanna walked with her to the table, speaking of the most ordinary things imaginable, the daily affairs of castle life. She made no insinuating references to the night before, did not wink suggestively or nudge Gwyneth meaningfully. She did not treat her in any way other than a woman worthy of friendship and respect.

  They sat down together, broke their bread and dipped it in the mild broth that was served them. Gwyneth marveled at how Johanna could maintain easy conversation that, nevertheless, carried the more serious message: Don’t worry! You’ll make it through this day, just as you did the previous one!

  “Well, then,” Johanna said at one point, “I suppose you must be of two minds about the latest news.”

  Gwyneth paused. “Two minds?” she asked, always cautious.

  Johanna crinkled her nose. “I am not the least interested in politics, in the general way of things,” she confessed, “but the great affairs of kings and kingdoms can hardly be avoided on certain occasions! Today is certainly one of them, with the Tower so restive and the troops ready to depart.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard the king has ordered troops to Bristol.”

  “With Simon among them,” Johanna added, “as he’s no doubt told you.”

  Gwyneth appreciated the way she said that without irony, although Johanna might have guessed that Beresford had told her nothing. Gwyneth was also aware that she had been provided an opening to learn more information, if she needed it. She was glad that she did not, but if she had, she would not have had to be embarrassed before Johanna.

  “Yes, I know that my husband is leading those troops,” Gwyneth said smoothly, “which is certainly a pity, when one is so newly married. Given that, I am of one mind only about his departure, not two.”

  “The only woman I know to be of one mind only!” Johanna teased.

  Gwyneth smiled a self-deprecating smile, then confided, “Except that his departure gives me a chance to adjust to my new circumstances with much breathing room, let us say, and now I will have the opportunity to put his house to rights while he is gone.”

  “You will reside at his house in his absence?” Johanna asked, her surprise evident.

  “He has given me his permission to do so,” Gwyneth stated.

  “And Adela?”

  “Why should she object?”

  Johanna looked at her directly and said, “Let me be frank about what I meant regarding your two minds. I had imagined that you would find it difficult to decide whether you would side, as loyal wife, with Beresford or, as loyal Northumbrian, with Duke Henry.”

  The comment served to remind Gwyneth that she had a conflict of interest on that score. It also put her in mind of the more interesting rumor she had heard from Auncilla. The second consideration seemed the more pressing of the two.

  “Which reminds me,” she said with an inflection of interest, meeting Johanna’s direct gaze with one of her own, “I also heard that reports of a traitor within castle walls are being circulated, and that the rumors come attached to several names. What say you to all of this?”

  Johanna’s brow furrowed. “I say, first of all, that they are idle, vicious and unfounded.” Her voice was sad. “So you see that you needn’t worry about—” Here she broke off and looked up at the person whose shadow had just fallen across the table.

  Gwyneth looked up, too, and was startled to see Beresford standing before them. The way he was looking at her was so very different from the way Canute would look at her, and the way she was reacting to him was so very different from the way she had reacted to Canute. She attempted, from force of habit, to hold Beresford in the familiar and magnificent contempt in which she had held her first husband, but the attempt lacked force and failed. She was angry at herself for not being able to remain emotionally chaste now that Beresford had possessed her body. Instead, she felt a spasm in the region of her heart. She hoped that she was not blushing.

  “What is idle, vicious and unfounded?” Beresford asked of his cousin.

  “Rumors,” Johanna replied offhandedly.

  “And the particular rumors in question?” he asked.

  “The usual, you know, Simon,” Johanna said dismissively. “Idle and vicious.”

  “Such is the nature of rumors,” he replied. “And for what reason should my wife not worry?”

  Johanna’s expression became more troubled, but she managed to keep her voice light. “Because Gwyneth has many friends at court, including myself, and I leave you now so that you may discuss with her, Simon, what is necessary before you depart.” So saying, she rose, made her pretty excuses and left Gwyneth to her husband.

  When Johanna had gone, Gwyneth felt a kind of fear, or maybe excitement, to be in Beresford’s presence in public. She said, “Do you join me, sire, as I finish my bread?”

  After a meditative pause, Beresford nodded. He came around and settled himself on the bench next to her. She advanced a few innocuous comments, to which he replied with palpable disinterest. Several knights drifted by, posing questions. He answered them curtly. Or, perhaps, Gwyneth decided, it was rather that he answered them efficiently. The knights moved on.

  Beresford turned to look at her. “And the rumors?” he asked.

  The question was abrupt, but not mysterious, and she saw no reason to evade the subject. “They concern a traitor within castle walls. Have you heard them?”

  He continued to regard her. “I’m always the last to hear the gossip, and most of the time I never do.”

  Something about the effect of his gray eyes upon her prompted her to rashness. She considered surprising hi
m with the conversation between Valmey and Rosalyn she had overheard the evening before. “I have my theories about who the traitor is.”

  Beresford looked both surprised and amused by this. “In sooth?”

  “One of the least unlikely men at court.”

  His amusement overcame his surprise. “Is it not always the case with traitors?” he mused. “And a man, no less.”

  “Well, could it realistically be a woman?”

  “Yes.”

  Gwyneth looked around the hall. Rosalyn came immediately to mind, but otherwise she drew a blank. “A woman. Well,” she conceded, almost playfully, “I suppose that you might be right.”

  Beresford’s gaze followed Gwyneth’s around the hall. “I see a number of women whose sympathies might be suspect.”

  “I would not know that, sire,” she said demurely, “given that I am so new to the Tower.”

  He grunted that this was so, and she found that she liked teasing him. She liked that he underestimated her. She liked that he thought himself so superior. It was like the kiss this morning, when he had wanted her to bow to his superior skill, but she had ended by bringing him to his knees instead.

  “While we are on the subject,” he said, “I spoke to Adela about my decision to allow you to remove to my house while I am absent from London.”

  Gwyneth turned her full attention to him. She admirably suppressed her desire to contest his phrasing, that it had been his decision to allow her to do as she wished. “And she saw the wisdom of such a move?” she asked.

  “Not at first.”

  “Oh?”

  “She did not want you out of her jurisdiction, with all the uncertainties of the moment,” he said with a shrug of his broad shoulders, “and with all the rumors.”

  Gwyneth absorbed the implications of this statement, and when it dawned on her that she was, in fact, the object of the castle rumors, she was stunned. Aghast, she decided that her wits must have been wrapped in a misty gauze—spun during the night of lovemaking with Beresford?—for her to miscalculate the simplest of all political sums. She nearly gasped at her own stupidity at being caught in her own trap set with a sultry kiss.

  “However, since I had already given you my permission to move in,” he was saying, “I persuaded Adela to have several Tower guards accompany you.”

  Still stunned, she asked, as bluntly as he would, “I am under house arrest?”

  “The guards will be there to help you,” he replied mildly, as if he had not understood what she meant, “and guide you.” He paused, his gray eyes warm upon her, and said, “I thought, my lady, that you would be thanking me for having secured your wishes, as a good husband should.”

  Gwyneth felt wild and strong emotions surge through her. She was angry at herself for having been outmaneuvered. She was angry at him for so plainly enjoying himself at her expense—for she did not for a moment believe him to be merely playing the role of kind husband. In a fit of pique, she reversed her intention to tell him anything of Valmey’s potential for treachery. Hard on the heels of that decision came the realization that it was scarcely the moment to accuse someone else of treasonous plotting, when she herself was a suspect. Then, too, she knew that one Norman knight would hardly be disposed to believe ill of another, simply on the basis of a word from her.

  “Thank you,” she said sweetly, mastering her voice but not the fire that rushed to her cheeks.

  He rose, looking very satisfied. He took her unresisting hand in his and bowed over it. “Now that I must be off, you may wish me Godspeed.”

  “I wish you Godspeed,” she said through her teeth.

  He pressed his lips to the back of her hand. He added quietly, provocatively, “And good success against Duke Henry.”

  She felt the tingle of his touch all the way up her arm and nearly snatched her hand away. She would not give him the satisfaction of wishing him good success on that score, and he could interpret her silence and her political interests any way he liked! As if she even cared!

  He released her hand, bowed once perfunctorily and, without another word, turned on his heels to stride across the room.

  She sat immobile, watching him depart. Her emotions, previously stirred, now spurted up inside her like a fountain. He had looked entirely too smug before he had turned away from her, as if he had her exactly where he wanted her. Well, he did not! Nor did she feel a thing except anger for the blunt, plain-speaking, graceless man who was her husband. Not a thing! She did not feel pain piercing her heart, causing her to catch her breath. Oh no, she could breathe easily, and her heart was beating just fine. She was healthy and alive and mistress of her destiny.

  But what was that annoying image hovering just at the limit of her vision? It was small and seemed to have wings and was carrying a bow and arrow. What was it, by Odin!

  She blinked and tried to shake her head clear of the hazy gauze befuddling her reason. Addled and with her anger flowing, she decided that the little winged creature must be the wily god Loki, transformed into a fly, which was the shape he often assumed to cause his trouble. Yes, that was it. The handsome, agile, cunning Loki was a fly buzzing around her head, distracting her, annoying her—although she knew of no tale in which Loki had ever carried a bow and arrow.

  Satisfied by the explanation, even a little relieved by it, she decided that Loki, god of mischief, had come to play a joke on her. But why did Loki’s fly look like a plump baby boy? And why did she feel a golden arrow pierce her heart?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Not too many hours later, Gwyneth stood in the middle of the courtyard of her new home, surveying the extent of the disaster that surrounded her. She had found an old smock and a kerchief for her hair. She had found several crippled brooms in the room on the upper story that had previously yielded the one Ermina had used to sweep out the mistress’s chamber. She had found a couple of badly damaged scrub brushes as well, along with some dilapidated pails and the miracle of a block of uncut soap. She even found some slovenly serving women in the back courtyard. Into their hands she thrust the implements that would put the household next to godliness, and after the proper motivational speeches, which threatened the immediate loss of their employment, she set the women to work.

  It took more skillful maneuvering to prompt the able -bodied men of the household into action. Beresford’s master of the armory, for instance, had never held anything as innocent or innocuous as brush and pail, and he felt it frankly beneath him to do so. Gwyneth solved the problem by providing him with a weighty item of construction, rather than destruction. The master of the armory waved the hammer experimentally, getting the feel and balance of it. Gwyneth smiled and informed him, with a straight face, that the true test of the tool was to use it without thumping one’s thumb.

  She derived perverse pleasure from making similar use of the five castle guards who had come to watch over her. She discovered soon enough that they were strong and stupid and responded well to authority. They were perfect for fetching water from the well, holding ladders and moving furniture. She imagined that they would report back to the castle next week, glumly, that Gwyneth of Beresford had cleaning on her mind more than treason. She would even be sure to thank Adela some day for having provided her with such brave and brainless assistance.

  Dinner was tasteless but edible, and supper not much better. She slept badly on a stale mattress and the next morning did what she had intended to do all along, which was to burn the bed curtains. On impulse, she decided to add to the fiery pile the ratty curtain that separated her chamber from Beresford’s. A number of household items seemed worthy of burning along with the rotten shutters. While she was at it, she rounded up Beresford’s sons, Benedict and Gilbert, stripped them naked and burned their verminous clothes as well. The two boys were dipped wriggling and protesting into warm, soapy water.

  Thus went the elemental cleaning process all morning long—fire and water, water and fire. And soap.

  That afternoon, in the escort of Sw
anilda, the least sullen of the serving women, Gwyneth left the house to familiarize herself with the neighborhood, informally known as Cornhill. She had never lived in such a large metropolis and so was not, at first, prepared for the hard bargaining that was carried out at the various stalls, all under the guise of trivial pleasantries. She wished to hire many of the local craftsmen, and since Beresford had given her no purse, she had to rely on her name for credit and her English for good bargains. Unfortunately, her ear had not accustomed itself to the peculiar cadences of the English spoken in London, and so at one booth she misheard a twenty for a two and concluded a very bad bargain that Beresford would be sure to question upon his return. Thereafter, she exercised greater caution.

  In addition to the deals she argued and sealed, her ears echoed with the busy hum and mingled sounds of work: the melodious anvil, the cry of the apprentices, the songs of the retailers, as well as those of the bakers who took around the loaves and the women who sold fish. Geese tied to the poulterers’ stalls honked and gabbled.

  First on her list of craftsmen to engage was the glazier, and next was the carpenter. When the services of the most reputable among these were secured, she established relations with the tiler and the plasterer. Then came the vintner, the alewife, the baker, the grocer, the miller, the cheese monger, the spicer, the knife smith, the draper, the chandler, the chaucer (although she did not immediately need shoes), the caplet monger and the buckle smith. On the whole, she made an excellent impression, and despite her obvious northern ancestry, was better received as a Northumbrian than as a Norman. Her beauty did not work to her disadvantage, either. The traders and goodwives generally concluded that Beresford’s marriage was a boon for local business.

  Gwyneth spent a strenuous few hours jostling for position and price in the warren of streets around Cornhill. At the end of the afternoon, she acknowledged that her feet had grown tired and her nose had had its fill of the tallow melting and the soap making, and the frank stink of the blood and offal that poured down the narrow lanes into the river from the nearby shambles. She and her woman returned home by way of the street that boasted The Swan.