A Love For All Seasons

To my nieces, Danielle, Melissa, and Katherine, and now Maddison, Anne and Hannah, and to my wonderful granddaughter, Judah, who have been waiting impatiently to see their names in one of my books. Thank you all for reminding me what it's like to be a little girl.

Famine walked the land that winter. Folk thronged before the abbey's mossy arched gateway, waiting for bread not blessings. Children cried, women moaned. Men, their shoulders hunched against stinging sleet, jockeyed for better positions. There were so many they packed the small field where the abbey held its yearly market, then spilled around the corner onto the coopers' lane, which followed the eastern edge of the holy house's walled compound. If some of the folk wore the ragged motley of the abbey's usual coterie of beggars, a far greater number dressed in the humble attire of the city's day laborers.

Johanna, wife to Katel l’Espicer, yanked her plodding palfrey to a halt and stared in horror. "Mary, mother of God!"

From her pillion perch behind one of the five following menservants, Johanna's maid freed a piteous, "Oh, mistress."

Shocked beyond response, Johanna could but stare at the crowded market field. If not as rich as London, Stanrudde was an affluent city, which should be able to take care of its own. "Theobald," she cried back to her husband's agent, who rode behind her husband's menservants, "why are these folk not being fed from the town granaries?"

"Let me pass! Move, you witless oafs," Theobald of Peterborough snapped as he worked his horse forward. Like their servants, he wore the maroon and gray garments of Katel's house. When he came abreast of his mistress, he pushed back his sodden capuchin to reveal a delicate profile framed by a fringe of brown hair and a graying beard. He studied the crowd.

"There's naught left to feed them and so they know. Despite that, this thieving rabble persists in trying to take a share of what is not theirs by looting warehouses and breaking into the homes of decent tradesmen," Theobald spat out. His gaze swept over the rings gleaming atop Johanna's gloved fingers, then lowered boldly to what little was visible of her thick gold chain and her richest, if oft mended, blue-gray overgown between her cloak's edges. "Given the opportunity, they'd tear you apart for a chance at what you wear."

Turning in his saddle, Theobald looked at the servants behind them. "We ride on through. If any man reaches for you, kill him." Then, without so much as a by-your-leave, he leaned over and snatched Johanna's reins from her grasp, and spurred his horse into motion.

As her palfrey complacently followed where he led, Johanna turned her gaze downward to glare at the saddletree and indulged herself in hatred, for him, for his master, but mostly for this miserable life of hers from which there was no escape. Despite Katel's promise of the past summer, this morn he'd sent Theobald to force her from her convent retirement after she'd had only five months' peace.

They started into the crowd. No pathway opened for them. Theobald threw back his head. "Make way," he shouted, "make way for Katel l’Espicer's wife!"

His call rebounded from the abbey's tall walls then dropped into the instant and unnatural silence that settled over the market field. Every man’s eye turned on their well-fed betters. Of a sudden, Johanna could hear her palfrey breathe and the creak of saddle leather as the horses moved. Harness rings rattled; the icy rain hissed where it hit fabric and spat into the mud. Hostility rode the same damp breeze that brought her the stench of rotting meat from the Shambles. A muted rumbling woke from the throng's far end, passing from mouth to mouth until it was a dark chant trapped between a dead and frigid earth and a leaden, uncaring heaven: the sound of her name.

Fear rose in Johanna until it swallowed even her anger. She tugged her cloak more tightly around her and turned her betraying rings gem-inward to her palms. To die because of the pretentious finery Katel demanded she wear would be the most horrible of ironies. Only after the last of their troop rounded the corner of the abbey's stony perimeter and exited the coopers' lane for the chandlers' enclave did the crowd quiet.

Relief coursed through her. Never before had that small field seemed so broad or Stanrudde's folk so unfriendly. Someone yanked on her cloak's hem.

Johanna yelped in nervous reaction and turned in her saddle. At her palfrey's side stood Agnes, Johanna’s former maidservant. Banished by Katel once his seed had taken root in her womb, the young woman's once lush dark hair now hung in damp, matted strings about her hollow-cheeked visage. Her shoes were naught but rags wrapped around her feet; only a threadbare blanket protected her and Katel's unwanted spawn from the rain.

The starving woman again caught her former employer's wife by the cloak him. "Mistress!" What remained of Agnes's life was invested in that single word.

At her cry Theobald glanced behind him, his face twisting as he recognized his master's discarded leman. He roweled his mount around and raised his hand to drive away the girl. "Get away, whore."

Trapped amid these horses and too worn by hunger to scream, Agnes could only turn her back to protect her child.

"Nay," Johanna cried, "you'll not strike one so hurt and helpless!" She spurred her palfrey until she stood between the starving woman and her husband's man.

Theobald, his hand yet held high in threat, glared at his mistress. "You know as well as I that whores like her are not allowed to approach household members. You'll move your horse and let me do as I must."

"Not this time." Johanna's words were as harsh as the wind whistling down the narrow lane. "I say you'll leave her be."

Theobald bared his teeth, his arm stiffening as if to strike her in Agnes's stead.

"Do it," Johanna goaded, straightening in her saddle until she glowered down at Katel's man from her superior height, "but think carefully over what you do. I am still your better. Strike me, and I will see you charged in court with assault, despite my husband."

With a fiery breath of frustration, Theobald dropped his hand to his side. "I will tell the master what you have done."

"But, of course you must." Johanna lowered her wimpled head and retreated into the role of obedient wife that she'd played for all her marriage's sixteen years. "I would expect nothing less of you."

With a raging hiss Katel's agent again turned his horse toward the city's center and the spice merchant's home. "Ride on," he shouted to the menservants.

Drawing her palfrey to one side, Johanna let the troop pass her. As they went, her maid and the men-servants each shot her brief glances. She ignored them to wrench off one of her rings, then leaned down to press the bit of gold and stone into the starving woman's hand. "Take it with my blessing. I only pray it may be of some help to you. If any question the gift, send them to me."

Agnes clutched the treasure close to her heart, the thanks that filled her eyes making tears of shame sprout in Johanna's. "You were always kind, Mistress, doing what you could. I know you would have aided me more if he allowed it." The searing emphasis in her voice left no doubt she meant Katel. With that, Agnes darted away, clutching potential salvation close to her heart.

Johanna stared after her, guilt spearing her heart. But, she hadn't done more and not because Katel disallowed it. Indeed, she'd been grateful to leave her husband's bed after the birth of her son in her second year of wedded bliss. She’d been grateful that he’d used Agnes and all the other women, because it meant he wasn’t using her. Guilt grew. If she'd been more of a wife to her husband, Agnes might not have needed today’s charity.

Johanna killed that bitter thought as she turned her palfrey's head toward the town's center and the house her father had built. It wasn't she who'd failed Katel, but he, her. If her husband had been a more forgiving man, theirs might have been a true marriage instead of the mockery it was.

Not a soul stirred along the narrow lane, and the unusual quiet roused Johanna from her dark thoughts. She glanced around her. Set wall to wall, the dwellings that lined the lane were so alike, what with their whitewashed walls framed by dark timbers and caps of thatch, that they gave the appearance of being one long building. Just now, every one of them glowered blindly down onto the street, lower-level workshops closed, second- and third-story windows tightly shuttered. The householders were besieged. That trade should be halted on a normal business day spoke to the desperation of Stanrudde's starving.

Once again, the fear Johanna'd known in the market field returned. Had not Theobald claimed that the hungry were attacking their betters in the hopes of finding wealth enough to fill their bellies? Of a sudden, she wished she hadn't let the menservants ride ahead of her. She drummed her heels into the palfrey's sides, urging the tired beast into something faster than a plod as they rounded the corner from the chandlers' enclave onto the ropemakers' street. They were barely on the lane when someone leapt out to grab her mount by the bridle. Johanna gasped in blind terror, yanking desperately on her reins in an effort at escape.

"Nay Mama, it's me," her son cried.

Johanna breathed out her fear as she stared down at Peter, her only child. There wasn't much of Katel to be seen in Peter, save for his blessedly well-shaped nose. Instead, she and he shared the same curling reddish gold hair and bright blue eyes, even the same pattern of dappling freckles on their pale skin. Having just reached ten and four, Peter had added at least a hand in height during these five months of Johanna’s absence for his head now reached past her waist’s level as he stood beside her horse. It wasn't his father's small frame that he'd inherited, but his grandsire's far larger form.

Peter was the only good thing to come out of her misbegotten marriage, the only thing that both she and Katel cherished. As love for her only child washed over Johanna, she leaned down in the saddle and ran gloved fingers through his tousled hair. "Peter, you frightened me half unto death!"

The corners of her son's mouth lifted briefly then the golden wisps that were his brows rose. "Mama, what are you doing here? I thought you were set on staying with the sisters."

All Johanna's anger and bitterness returned. So she had been. How easily Theobald had pried her from the quiet comfort of the convent simply by reminding the prioress that Johanna was Katel's wife, and Katel wished her returned to him.

"Your father has called me home for some reason of his own," Johanna said, struggling to keep the harsh edge from her words. It was wrong to berate Peter's sire in front of him. In an attempt to distract Peter from her hatred for his sire, she turned the question around on her child. "I think I should be asking the same thing of you. Why are you out and about when you should be in Master Alfred's shop, hard at your labors?"

Peter shrugged his newly broadened shoulders beneath his brown tunic and leather apron, the mark of his apprenticeship to Stanrudde's goldsmith. "He isn't in the shop this day, but at the market hall with the other councilmen. That's how I knew you'd come. Mistress Ann sent me to him with a message, and I met Theobald in the green. Since our shop is in this direction, I thought I'd wait to greet you." He shifted to stand closer to the horse. "Mama, now that you have returned, will you stay?" There was the barest hint of hope in his voice.

Guilt again twisted in Johanna. However much her retreat into the convent had hurt Peter, watching his parents locked in their hidden and hateful war did him far worse damage. Now that he no longer lived at home, Johanna saw no reason to continue in the situation. Nor would she. She shook her head. "You know I cannot."

Pain flashed through Peter's blue eyes then his face lost all expression. Johanna patted the yet childish roundness of his cheek. "It’s better this way, my little love. Know you, I am counting the hours until Eastertide when you come to the priory and we have a true visit," she said softly. "Now, be off with you while I go to see what it is your father requires of me."

As he stared up at her, Peter's mouth tightened, the sadness in his gaze growing. Of a sudden, he was a boy no longer. "Mama, you must have a care. Papa was acting strangely when I visited last week."

Again, Peter lifted his shoulders, his eyes shifting uneasily from her to the row of houses that lined the lane. He released her palfrey's bridle and stepped back from the horse's side. "Nay, he drank only a little. Rather, he smiled often to himself, as if cherishing secrets. When he spoke of you, it was to call you whore. What is wrong with him, Mama? Why is he doing this?" His words were a quiet, aching cry and tears sparked in his eyes as he betrayed one parent to warn the other. In the next moment, as if the pain were more than he could bear, he turned away from her and raced down the lane.