Almost Innocent (30 page)

“I poked it down with a stick,” she said, the anxiety gone from her expression. “I ask your pardon if—”

“There is no need for that,” he interrupted. “Let us go to my study. There are one or two matters I would discuss with you.” He laid a hand gently on her shoulder and turned her toward the donjon.

Magdalen accompanied him readily, her step once more light. Outside the study, however, they found Olivier waiting with the watchful patience of one accustomed to waiting and accustomed to making the most of the activity.

“You said to come for your instructions, my lord,” he said, acknowledging Magdalen with a bobbing motion of his head. “And the means of travel,” he added.

Guy frowned. He had forgotten his summons to Olivier when he had invited Magdalen to accompany him. It was an unfortunate lapse since he could hardly conduct this business with the servant in front of the lady. Neither could he postpone his discussion with
Olivier, since the sooner the spy left on the heels of Charles d’Auriac the better.

“Come within,” he said, opening the door. “Magdalen, I must ask you to wait here. I will not be many minutes.”

Magdalen regarded the firmly closed door with a raised eyebrow, aware that she did not care to be left standing outside in the passage like a summoned servant or a suppliant. What private business did Guy have to conduct so urgently with the olive-skinned, agile, bright-eyed man of Provence? A mysterious man, Magdalen had always thought. He came and went, and as far as she could tell, had no clear-cut, official function in the Lord de Gervais’s household. But it had always been clear to her that he was on unusual terms with his lord.

She had first noticed him, clinging like a shadow to Lord de Gervais, his eyes everywhere, when they had come to Bellair to fetch her after their return from France. Since then, she had been aware of him only occasionally. He was the kind of man one forgot about unless he did something to attract attention. And she could not remember his ever doing that, except now.

Behind the heavy oak door, Guy handed Olivier a fat purse. “You will be able to insinuate yourself into his household, I trust.”

“No doubt, my lord,” Olivier said with calm confidence, taking the purse. “I have been to some pains to gain the confidence of the laundress in their company. She believes me to be dissatisfied with my present employment, and . . .” He shrugged his bony shoulders, stating the fact without emphasis or particular interest, “I think she will be happy to see me again. She will enable me to find kitchen work with them while they travel and in Paris.”

“You are certain you have not come to the notice of d’Auriac? I’ll not have you running unnecessary risks,” Guy said, frowning.

Olivier shook his head. “He’s not a man for poking around the kitchens, my lord. One servant looks much like another, and it’s the chamberlain who does the hiring. I doubt the
sieur
has ever knowingly laid eyes on me.”

Guy nodded. Migrant workers, picking up domestic or laboring work where and when they could, were not unusual and were certainly not the concern of the head of the household. He was sure there were many such coming and going at Bresse and he would know nothing of them unless they committed some offense that required his adjudication. Charles d’Auriac would not recognize Olivier. “Be watchful, then.”

“How long should I remain with the
sieur’s
household?”

“Until you have discovered something worth telling,” Guy said, going to the window, looking out over the plain. “I would know most importantly what he intends regarding the Lady Magdalen, Olivier. But I trust you to judge what else I need to know.”

“I will send messages in the usual way?”

Guy nodded. “There are always minstrels, pilgrims, troubadours who can carry news. It has worked well enough in the past.”

He saw Olivier to the door and smiled invitingly at Magdalen, who had a rather martial light in her eyes. “I do beg your pardon for keeping you without,” he said. “But my business with Olivier was of a private nature.”

“I assumed it to be so, my lord,” she responded a little stiffly, coming into the room. “What was it you wished to discuss with me?”

“Oh, come now, pippin!” He took her in his arms, pushing up her chin with his thumb. “Cannot you guess?”

“I did not mean to be foolish in the orchard,” she said, as usual all sense of grievance leaving her under his smiling regard, the caressing tone.

“I was unpardonably ill humored,” he said, moving
his thumb to her mouth. “And you were merely exuberant.”

“Oh.” She moistened his stroking thumb with the darting tip of her tongue. “And I thought I was being willful and childish and sadly vexing.”

He laughed warmly. “I thought you were, too, but I have since changed my mind. I missed you this morning when I awoke.”

“I did not wish to disturb your sleep. You sat late in the night.”

He nodded. “There was much to be done . . . What is it, love?” A strange expression had crossed her face, a look of puzzlement, of astonishment.

“I do not know,” she said slowly, looking down at herself, her hand moving to her belly. The strange little flutter came again from deep within her, a flutter like a bird’s wings. She raised her head, her eyes strangely bright. “It is the child,” she said in hushed wonder. “The child is quickening, Guy.”

Gently, with the same wonder, he placed his hand on her belly beside her own. “You cannot feel it yet,” she said. He shook his head, smiling.

“Soon you will,” she asserted. “Our child grows apace, my love.”

“B
ROTHER
F
ELIX SHOULD
be returning soon, Father Abbot.”

“And with news to put our poor son’s soul at ease, I trust.” The abbot resumed his measured pacing along the paved terrace above the abbey vegetable garden. “His strength returns, it seems, by the minute.” He gestured to the figure in the plain wool robe of a lay brother, laboring in the vegetable garden below, swinging his hoe with easy, rhythmic movements.

“He is a man of the sword, young and strong,” the monk responded. “Such bodies heal well even from such fearsome wounds as our brother suffered.”

“If God so wills, Brother Armand, if God so wills,” the abbot gently reminded. “I doubt youth and strength would have prevailed without the timely assistance of the charcoal burner and your healing skills.”

Brother Armand put aside the compliment, as was expected of him. “What skills I have, Father, are God-given.”

“Of course . . . of course,” placidly agreed the abbot. “But whatever their genesis, our son has cause to be grateful to them.” He turned toward the great gray stone building of the abbey behind them. The last wintry rays of the afternoon sun caught the delicate flat arcading on the square, unbuttressed towers standing at its four corners.

It was a sight that never failed to uplift the Father Abbot, and he let his eyes rest upon it for a minute before
gathering his cloak about him. “I must talk with Brother Gareth about the pilgrims arrived from Canterbury. Our almoner had some doubts as to whether the guest hall would accommodate them all in seemly fashion.” He smiled, a knowing smile for one who lived apart from the world. “Brother Gareth is always perturbed by the presence of women pilgrims. I believe he fears some improper journeyings between the dorters if he is not very vigilant. I must reassure him that the power of prayer is sufficient to safeguard the spiritual health of our cloisters.”

The abbot moved away with deliberate steps, his robes fluttering in the February wind, rising sharply now with the setting of the feeble sun.

Brother Armand remained where he was, watching the gardener at work, his eye assessing the movement of the body, noting where there was residual stiffness, noting that the young man still stopped frequently to draw breath, resting on his hoe. It had been seven months since the charcoal burner had dragged the hurdle with its unconscious burden to the postern gate of the abbey, seeking the monks’ skills for a man so close to death it seemed impossible that he would remain in this world.

There had been nothing to identify the man. His body had been stripped by whoever had attacked him, and he wore only a shirt and hose, not even his boots left to him. Brother Armand had noticed immediately the hard muscle and sinew beneath the body’s broken surface, the calluses on his hands and the stronger muscular swell in his right arm, all signs of a man who lived by the sword. His shirt, torn and bloody though it was, was of the finest linen, cuffs and neck embroidered with delicate stitching. It seemed reasonable to conclude that the wounded man was of knightly birth and had been set upon by outlaws.

They had not believed he could live, but he had clung to life with an astonishing tenacity, barely conscious most of the time, yet submitting with the trust of
an infant to the nursing, the feeding, and the cleansing, and with the stoical courage of a man of war to the agonies of his broken body.

It was growing dark, and soon the bell for vespers would summon the abbey’s inhabitants, monks, pilgrims, and chance travelers alike, to the chapel. The evening chill would not benefit a man newly arisen from his sickbed. Brother Armand called to the man in the garden.

Edmund de Bresse looked up at the shout and waved a hand in acknowledgment. He was reluctant to go inside, however, relishing the physical labor, for all that hoeing between rows of cabbages was neither dignified nor particularly strenuous labor. But his body, so long deprived of movement and exertion, seemed to stretch with pleasure, to come alive again, bringing him awareness of his whole body, of muscle and sinew and the blood flowing strong in his veins. For one who had almost crossed the frontier into death, who had hovered for many weeks in the gray, twilight land of near death, this recognition of his body, even in its complaints and the stiffness of disuse, brought the sweetest joy.

He had little memory of the attack, remembered vaguely the agonized crawl through the undergrowth when his assailants had left him for dead. He had wanted to lie still and die; death had beckoned most strongly, offering surcease from his pain, but some stubborn will to live had driven him to crawl on his hands and knees away from the blood-drenched ground on which he lay. He remembered the clearing, the pile of faggots beside the tumbledown hut, the strange fog through which he saw the bearded face peering down at him. And then he remembered nothing else; only pain was coherent and then the terror that he would live but would not be whole.

He had not known why the fear should be so all-pervasive, so consuming of his conscious moments, until the time when he opened his eyes and the fog was not
there. The pain was still present, but it was no longer everything, it was an addition to himself, not intrinsic to himself. His first thought was of his wife, a wife who could not have a husband who was not whole. He had flexed fingers and toes, run his hands over his shape beneath the blankets, and had sought confirmation from the calm-eyed monk watching at his bedside.

He had spent many days drifting in healing lethargy, thinking of Magdalen, seeing those clear gray eyes, the rich mass of hair, her mouth so redolent with promise. He had been content to lie in the infirmary, thinking of her when he was not asleep, and dreaming of her when he was not awake. But in truth the two states had been very similar, as much as anything because of the potent draughts fed him by Brother Armand, draughts that kept him still as his body knitted. And then, as his strength returned and the strength of the potions was diminished consonantly, had come the knowledge that the world to which he belonged was continuing without him and he must do something about reentering it. And with that knowledge had come the anxiety that now tormented him. If he was believed dead, what had become of Magdalen? Had Lancaster given her to some other knight in the interests of power or alliance, while he had been lying here dreamily recuperating?

The Father Abbot had been sympathetic but insistent that the patient was in no fit state to leave the care of Brother Armand. One of the monks would be leaving in three days’ time on a journey to their sister abbey at Swindon. He would make a detour to Westminster on the way back and carry a message to the duke.

Edmund glanced up into the darkening sky where rooks cawed, circling the bare winter treetops, the flock gathering for the night. Brother Felix had been gone three weeks. If he did not return by tomorrow, Edmund would leave here anyway. He was strong enough now to accomplish what could not be more than two days’ walk to Westminster at the easy pace necessitated by a
man not yet robust. The abbey was isolated, tucked away from the well-traveled roads, its brotherhood given to prayer and meditation and the pursuit of learning rather than involvement in the temporal world. They received hospitably enough those guests and pilgrims willing to penetrate the forest this far in search of a night’s lodging, but their work was more in the scholarly realms of books and texts, in the meticulous, exquisite illustration of those books and texts than in feeding and correcting the souls of ordinary folk. Edmund’s urgency had failed to impress them. It belonged too much to the world of men. But it was time now for him to take his own life in his own hands again.