A Dangerous Love (9 page)

The bride would have a dower of one hundred gold pieces, full weight, not clipped; a dozen silver spoons; two chased silver cups; a trunk of linens for both table and bed; three new gowns; three bolts of cloth; new leather shoes; a gold chain; and two gold rings, one with a pearl, and the other with a ruby. There would also be a pair of silver candlesticks, a wedding gift from the queen; and two horses, a palfrey for the bride, a stallion for the groom, from the king.

And while her fate was being decided without her, Adair had reached Stanton in just under a fortnight.

The trip home had taken much less time, given that they might travel the roads, and those roads were safe again.

Still, it was a miracle that two women alone but for a large dog had managed to reach Stanton without incident. They rode into her village, and, recognizing Elsbeth, the villagers flocked from their cottages. One look at the girl riding with her and the villagers fell to their knees, some of them sobbing.

“What is it, Mama?” a little boy asked his parent.

“Why do you greet?”

“ ’Tis the young mistress come home to us, laddie,” his mother told him as she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Once again there is a Radcliffe on the land.

Praise be to our sweet Lord Jesu and his blessed Mother!”

An older man arose and bowed to Adair. “Welcome home, my lady. I am Albert. My da was your father’s majordomo. I am pleased to say the hall is most habitable. Good Duke Richard came several years ago and told us of your miraculous escape. His men restored the building’s roof, and we have kept the hall clean.”

“Thank you, Albert,” Adair said, looking at him from her saddle. “Thank you all for your welcome. Tell me, does your da still live, and is he able to return to his duties?”

“Alas, my lady, my da died fighting at the earl’s side,” 
Albert replied.

“God assoil both their good souls,” Adair said quietly.

“Will you then take your father’s place in my hall?”

“I am honored that you would ask me, my lady, and right gladly I will serve you,” Albert answered, and he smiled broadly. Then he grew more sober. “We lost many furnishings in the fire, I fear, my lady. With your permission I will order the craftsmen to begin making new for you. And I will gather together a staff for the hall. While many were slain that terrible day, many survived. And with the winter coming there will be more hands to help before it is time to prepare for the spring.”

“Walk with me up to the hall,” Adair said, moving her horse forward. “Have we any cattle, or was it all lost that day?”

“What wasn’t lost was eventually stolen by our neighbors, both Scots and English,” Albert said.

Adair nodded. “We will replace them come the 
spring. No sense in buying them now and having to feed them through the winter,” she reasoned.

“My lady, if I may be so bold,” Albert said. “How did you and Elsbeth escape the carnage? I should not have known you but that you resemble your dear mother so greatly. And is that poor weary creature one of your father’s dogs?”

“There is an escape tunnel from the hall. My parents put Elsbeth and me into it along with Beiste that day.

They had horses waiting for us at the other end. We remained until the raiders had gone. I was sent to King Edward, as he owed my father a debt. I have been raised in his household these ten years past. It was Duke Richard who found us on the road as we neared Westminster, where the queen lay in sanctuary,” Adair explained, making her story as simple as possible. There was no need for any other here except for Elsbeth to know the truth of who really sired her. She would not shame John Radcliffe, who had always been so good to the child she once was.

“When the good duke came and told us that you lived we counted it a miracle. He promised us that you would return one day, my lady,” Albert said. “And you have.”

“First I will settle in,” Adair told him. “You must tell me who survived, what is left, and then we will decide how to proceed.”

They reached the hall and entered the courtyard, which was, Adair noted, well swept, but otherwise barren. The roses and other plantings her mother had so lovingly tended were obviously long gone. Probably destroyed in the fire, Adair considered sadly. In the spring they would replant, for it was too late now, and the frost
 
was already in the soil this far north. Albert took a key from the pocket in his breeches and fit it in the door of the stone building. The key turned easily, and he flung the door open.

They stepped inside. It was cold and dank within. The only light came from the weak midmorning sunlight coming through the few unshuttered windows that were unbroken. Adair walked forward, remembering the corridor leading to the great hall as her favorite place to play and hide from Nursie. It was the same, and yet it wasn’t. The house was so very, very quiet. There was no life to it at all, but neither was it filled with any haunts of those killed here on that awful day so long ago.

“Can the villagers spare any wood, Albert? We must get some warmth back into the house before nightfall,”

Adair said. She looked about her as they entered the great hall. It was virtually empty but for two high-backed wood chairs behind a ramshackle table that sat where the high board had once been, and a low-backed wooden settle by the large hearth. The hearth had no firedogs. The tapestries were gone from the walls.

“The roof and the interior burned,” Albert explained.

“The walls stood, which is why we were able to save the hall, my lady.”

“Were the contents of all the rooms damaged or pillaged?” she asked him.

“All but the kitchens below the great hall, my lady.

The upper stories and the hall were fired individually, and the contents carried off, but the kitchens were not thought important. The women who survived to return packed everything away in the cupboards for the family’s return one day. We knew you would come home to us.”

Elsbeth had been silent, but now she seemed to recover from her shock of seeing what had once been a gracious home destroyed. “Fetch the wood,” she told Albert. “And see if any would be kind enough to loan us pallets, and not ones filled with fleas, if you please.

Her ladyship will sleep in the hall temporarily until we can get some furnishings made. And we’ll need a staff.

And everything that’s broken must be repaired as soon as possible, for the winter will not be kind to any of us.”

“Indeed, Mistress Elsbeth, it won’t,” Albert said.

“ ’Tis good to see you home again too. You’ll have some grand stories to tell, I’m sure.”

“I’m not one for telling tales,” Elsbeth responded.

“Oh, Nursie”—Adair fell back for a moment on her old form of address for Elsbeth—“I’m sure Albert and the other Stanton folk would love hearing your stories of the king and the court. There is no harm in it.”

“If it’s all right with your ladyship, well, then, perhaps I can recall a few moments that might entertain,” Elsbeth said slowly. “But I’m no gossip!”

Albert grinned at Elsbeth. He was a stocky man of medium height with mild blue eyes and a fringe of brownish hair beneath a bald pink pate. “I’ll look forward to it,” he told her with a mischievous wink.

“Now, you mind your manners,” Elsbeth scolded.

Then her tone softened. “How is your mother? I remember her so well.”

“She escaped the carnage. They weren’t interested in an old woman,” he said. “She will be happy to see you, Elsbeth.”

“And your wife? You have certainly taken a wife, Albert?”

“Nay. There was no time,” he answered her. “At first there were only a few old men and women and some younglings left after the raid. I had been injured and left for dead. Over the next few months some of the younger women returned, many with big bellies. And finally about a dozen of the other men, young and of middle years. I was, it seemed, in charge. We have managed to rebuild the village, keep the hall safe, and plant enough to just get by.” He turned to Adair. “I have had to act as sheriff and magistrate, my lady. We were for 
gotten here in Stanton until the duke came. If I have overstepped my authority, my lady, I hope you will forgive me,” Albert finished.

“Nay,” Adair told him. “You have done nobly, Albert, and you have my undying gratitude and thanks for your loyalty to Stanton. But for the duke it is likely we will continue to be forgotten. Now, you had best arrange for that wood and our pallets. I am going to walk about my home now and reacquaint myself with it.” With a nod she left the hall.

“She looks like her ma,” Albert said.

Elsbeth nodded. “Aye, she does. But she’s stubborn.

She’s run away from the king’s house, and best you know it now. She thinks they’ll not come after her, but I disagree. She has value to the king.”

“Run away? Why?” he asked.

Elsbeth motioned Albert to a chair. “Sit a moment, and I will tell you.”

“Let me get the wood first and begin a fire to warm the hall,” he said to her. “Then we can speak, and I will listen to what you have to tell me.”

She nodded to him. “Go on then.” And she sat down as he went out. It seemed that he was gone a very little time, but when he returned it was with several men and women bearing all kinds of items. Enough wood for several days was stacked by the large hearth. The wobbly table was removed, and in its place a great high board was set.

“Now, where did that come from?” Elsbeth wanted to know.

“It’s the original,” Albert told her. “It was badly scorched by the fire when the roof over the hall fell in, but then the rains came. We were able to save and restore it. It’s been in a shed in the courtyard. I’d forgotten about it until old Wat reminded me.”

Elsbeth nodded. She walked over to the great table and slowly ran her hand over it with a small smile. Then she turned to the villagers. “I know she’ll thank you all 66

for this. To be able to sit at the same high board her mama and da sat at will be a comfort.”

The women gathered about smiled and nodded. And then they began placing food upon the table. One drew a silver goblet studded with oval green stones from her skirts. She placed it carefully on the high board where Adair would soon sit.

“We saved several items that weren’t stolen,” Albert said quietly.

Having done their duty for now, the villagers departed the great hall. Elsbeth noted there were now two thick pallets in the bed spaces by the fire, each set upon a sheepskin, and with a small coverlet. She nodded, pleased. It wasn’t grand, but they would be warm, dry, and comfortable for the first time since they had left Windsor.

“Come on, lass, and tell me what I should know,” Albert said, motioning Elsbeth back to the settle by the fire.

Elsbeth sat down with a sigh. “The king wants her to marry. She didn’t want to wed yet. Nor did she approve of his choice of a husband for her—the by-blow of an important Lancastrian. The king is attempting to make a more permanent peace between the two factions. He’s plenty of daughters of his own, but the eldest will probably be queen of France, the next eldest is too frail for marriage, and the third girl is to go to the Lancastrian heir, Henry Tudor. The others are too young yet by far.

To show his good faith toward the Tudors the king decided to marry Adair off first. She is his ward, a noblewoman in her own right. Marriage to her will give her bridegroom the earldom, and the king promised her a generous dower portion. But my lady did not wish to be wed to a Lancastrian. They killed her parents, and orphaned her. Nor did she wish to marry yet. She is younger in age than Princess Elizabeth. She wanted to come home, Albert. And she did. She thinks the king will forget about her and find another lass to wed the Tudor’s by-blow. But he won’t.

“The king is a stubborn man, and he rules with a smile, and an iron fist in a silken glove. Servants know more than their masters, as you well understand, Albert. My lady has spent these last ten years well sheltered in the royal nurseries with the king’s children.

They know little of what goes on in the outside world.

King Edward is a charming man, and well loved by his people. But he is also a man who will be obeyed. If he says our lady is to wed, then wed she will be. I am frankly surprised no one came after us in our flight these twelve days past.”

“I am surprised you got there and back in safety without an armed escort,” Albert remarked with a shake of his head.

“Going south was hard,” Elsbeth admitted. “It took us over a month, but I followed the earl’s orders and kept from the high road. The countryside was so upset that everyone went quickly about their business. The dog, of course, was in his prime then, and no one sought to tangle with him. Returning, however, was a far different matter. We rode hard, and at times my lady took the dog up and laid him across her saddle, for he could not keep up. She loves that creature fiercely, but he’s old, and I think he may not live too long now that we are home,” Elsbeth said.

“How could my lady even be certain that Stanton still existed?” Albert said. “Many families who once had homes and land along the border are long gone.”

“The Duke of Gloucester told her. It was he who found us as we sought to reach London. My lady calls him Uncle Dickon, as all the king’s children do. She adores him, and he has always treated her with favor
more even than he shows the others. He is a man who loves children,” Elsbeth said.

“Aye, I could see that on the occasions he came to Stanton,” Albert agreed. “He always brought sugared treats for the bairns.”

“There is absolutely nothing left above stairs,” Adair 
said as she reentered the hall. “Not a stick of furniture, or a carpet, or hangings.”

Albert quickly stood up. “The burning roof fell in and destroyed all,” he explained. “The floors, being stone, protected the chambers below. We saved what little was not looted and hid it away. The Scots were raiding then.

Most of the cattle went over the Cheviots with them.”

He bowed to Adair. “With your ladyship’s permission I’ll be going now. There’s food for the night on the high board. And I have posted men at the door of the hall.