Almost Innocent (33 page)

On impulse, he turned aside into the orchard, where beneath the trees daffodils and bluebells massed in heady springtime profusion. He picked an armful, his fingers sticky with their juices as the thick stems broke for him. Abruptly, powerfully, he was reminded of the juices of love, spilled with so much delight, and he inhaled deeply of the fragrance in his arms, a fresh, youthful fragrance so redolent of Magdalen.

Carrying the bouquet, he left the orchard, climbed the outside stairs, and made his way to Magdalen’s apartments. The door stood ajar. He pushed it open. Erin and Margery were not there, only Magdalen sitting up in the big bed, still pale but smiling at him. She held out her hands in welcome.

He closed the door softly behind him and trod to the bed. “You are feeling stronger, love?”

“Immeasurably,” she replied. “What beautiful flowers.” She lifted the sleeping baby from her nest within the crook of her arm. “Your daughter, my lord.”

Guy let the flowers tumble to the bed, scattering in scented yellow, blue, and white across the coverlet. He took the child as Magdalen scooped up the flowers and buried her nose in the blooms, smiling with her eyes as she saw the soft melting of the strong features, the delicate exploration of a fingertip accustomed to sword and steel.

“Zoe,” she said. “I would christen her Zoe, my lord. The gift of life.”

“Zoe.” Again he touched the tiny snub nose with the tip of his little finger. “But it’s hardly a Plantagenet name, sweetheart.”

Magdalen’s face hardened. “She does not have to bear a Plantagenet name. She is our child, Guy, and will bear the name we bestow upon her. A name of love, not of dynasty.”

He raised the child and lightly kissed the wrinkled forehead in benediction. “Zoe, then,” he said softly. “In affirmation of life and of love.”

E
DMUND DE
B
RESSE STOOD
on the forecastle of the
St. Anne
in the fresh dawn, watching as the ramparts of Calais became defined in the early mist lying over the smooth water. Running before the brisk dawn wind, they passed within the harbor walls, the pennons of Lancaster and de Bresse flying at the masthead to match the standard of England, lilies and leopard, flying from the welcoming ramparts.

Edmund felt his spirits lift, the energy so long depleted in his body surge anew as they approached the familiar quay, gateway to the royally disputed territory of France and to his own fief. Within that fief lay his wife and his child. The child must have been born in the last few weeks. Had he sired a male heir? Did the child live? The latter question always served to make the former unimportant. Whatever the child’s sex, it was still his heir. And the child’s mother? Had she survived the birth? There were so many hazards he’d heard tell of, even if she survived delivery: the fever, the milk leg, the flux, and the wasting.

Please God to have kept her safe, he whispered in an agony of anticipation. They had been parted, it seemed to him, as soon as he had discovered a world wherein his love for Magdalen of Lancaster was the defining characteristic. Her image filled his waking moments; the soft, supple lines of her body filled his arms during the long reaches of the night. He had recognized that his passion was unshared. His wife did not feel such a
one for her husband. He knew she liked him, accepted her marriage and everything that went with it. But she gave him no more than friendship and acceptance. It was a recognition that disappointed him, but with the optimism of youth, the confidence of a man who had done and seen and succeeded as he had, he believed that she would come to love him as he loved her. He would teach her the ways of loving, and in his arms she would at last respond with the ardor and delight he took in her.

Gulls wheeled and called, swooping low over the deck looking for littering scraps. Sailors were running to their stations now, preparing to drop the square-rigged sail as the vessel drew closer to the quay. On the quay stood the harbormen, ready to receive and make fast the massive ropes once the ship dropped anchor.

Edmund stayed on deck, enjoying the bustle. His squire and pages would see to the ordering of his possessions and their unloading. Making landfall this early in the day meant they could set out for Picardy as soon as the three ships were docked and horses, men, arms, and provisions were assembled. If they met no delays, they should not have to spend more than five nights on the road. He would send a herald on ahead with an escort of lancers to alert his wife and household to his arrival. A small party, traveling on swift horses, could expect to reach the Castle de Bresse a day earlier than the main body, and his wife would be ready to welcome him with full honors on the morrow.

The sun came up on a May morning, a delicate cobweb of a morning, and he was reminded of another May Day, when he had gone out before dawn to pick marigolds by the river before the first touch of sun had dried the dew. It was a posy for his betrothed, a lively, dancing sprite of a girl with a long plait and sparkling gray eyes and an impatience with his obedience to courtly etiquette. He could see her now on that long-ago morning, distributing his carefully picked flowers
among her companions, thanking him gaily for his gift as if it had not been specially offered. And he could feel again his own chagrin. He had kissed her later as they played around the Maypole and the girls—children and maidens—ran squealing from the pursuit of swains, both serious and playful.

He had kissed her out of chagrin and a fierce determination to stake his claim to her attention. Had things changed between them that much in the intervening years? Wasn’t he still trying to stake his claim to her attention? Oh, she accorded him all the public respect a wife must accord her husband, but when they were alone, he knew he craved so much more than her easy smile, relaxed companionship, willing participation in their bed. He wanted her to match him. He wanted to feel that perhaps he had the edge, that she could possibly want more from him than he was prepared to give . . . He wanted to feel that she could feel as he did.

He lifted his face to the sun. In this land, he would begin anew . . .
They
would begin anew. His memory of hovering in death’s antechamber was still a vivid spur to the enjoyment of life and gratitude for God’s mercy. He was in many ways newborn, and his life stretched ahead, a blank parchment on which he would write what he chose. He would inscribe his love, and he would create the rhyming couplet.

An hour later, the herald, charged with the news of the imminent arrival of the Sieur Edmund de Bresse, galloped out of the town and down the white, winding track toward the plains of Picardy.

G
UY WALKED INTO
the pleasaunce under the brilliant blue of the May sky. The scent of lilac hung heavy. He heard the soft strumming of a lute coming from the center of the garden where a fountain plashed into a stone bowl and doves cooed from the dovecote set among thyme and rosemary, sage and marjoram in the herb garden.

He trod softly, hoping to catch the little party unaware, to watch unespied for a moment. He was remembering another May Day when the woman now sitting with her baby was herself a child. An eager, impetuous, laughing, loving child, who had begged him for a silver penny and pouted because they had traveled too fast to enjoy the jongleurs and other sights of the journey to London.

He stood behind a laburnum, concealed by the mass of golden flowers drooping on leafy stalks, a smile on his lips as he watched. Theo was playing his lute, singing softly. The lad had nimble fingers on the strings and a sweet, well-pitched voice. Erin and Margery sat stitching tiny garments with lace edging, a basket frothing with cambric and lace between them as they sewed for the baby. The baby slept in her mother’s arms.

Magdalen was sitting in a cushioned chair in the shade of a willow tree, playing idly with the fat yellow catkins drifting in her lap. She was dressed in a simple cotehardie of ivory linen, a white silk snood confining her hair, and her face in repose showed him a deep contentment, the eyelids lowered languidly over eyes that he knew would be quiet, her mouth soft . . . but as sensual as ever. She was still a little pale, but it was not the pallor of ill health, more of the necessary peaceful lethargy of recuperation.

“I know you are there, my lord.” She spoke softly, turning her head toward the laburnum, a smile on her lips. “Do you come to spy upon us, sir?”

“No, I came but to see how you did.” Laughing, he stepped out of concealment. “That is a pretty song, Theo. If you paid as much attention to your Latin as you do to your singing and playing, you would be more at ease in body and soul, I believe.”

“Oh, for shame, my lord,” Magdalen protested. “To offer a compliment as excuse for castigation is of all things the most ungenerous.”

Theo was blushing fiercely at this reminder of his recent
troubles at the hand of the master of pages. Guy took pity on him. “You are right, my lady. I withdraw the castigation and leave the compliment. Would you find Geoffrey, Theo, and tell him that I will ride out within the hour.”

The relieved page made good his escape, and Guy, still laughing, sat down at a stone bench beside the dovecote. A bowl of corn sat on the paving stone, and he scooped up a handful, holding out his palm, flat and still, as he watched Magdalen and his daughter. A dove alighted on his palm with a whirr of wings, delicately took a morsel of corn and flew off.

“Where do you ride, my lord?” Magdalen moved the sleeping infant to her other arm.

“To Seriac. There is some trouble over the raising of taxes,” he said easily. “The farmers need reminding that the Sieur de Bresse must have his revenues if he is to provide adequate protection for his vassals.” Another dove came to feed from his palm.

“It is tame work for a knight,” Magdalen said. “Do you not find it so? You would prefer to be campaigning, would you not?”

“I do my overlord’s bidding,” Guy replied with a smile. “For the nonce, I am content.” He tossed the corn to the ground, where it was swooped upon by a bevy of doves, and held out his arms. “I would hold the child, if you think I will not wake her.”

“She will be hungry soon, anyway.” Magdalen reached over to lay Zoe in her father’s arms. “She has grown, do you not think? Do you find her heavier?”

Guy considered the question. In truth, the child was so light he could barely feel her in any substantive way, but then he was accustomed to hefting the great weight of sword and lance, so perhaps it was not surprising he should feel this diminutive creature as no more than the weight of a butterfly. He gave Magdalen the answer she desired and expected, however. “A little, I believe.” He touched the baby’s nose, the cleft of her chin, and she
snuffled, the little mouth pursing, her nose wrinkling. He laughed in sheer delight at the tiny perfection of her.

Zoe’s mouth opened abruptly on a thinly demanding cry, her eyes scrunching. Reluctantly, Guy returned the baby to her mother. “She has need of you, I believe.”

“I will go in and feed her.” Magdalen handed the child to the waiting Erin and accepted Guy’s arm to stand up. She leaned heavily on him for a minute. “I am becoming stronger, but it is so tedious. I shall be glad to go riding and hawking again.”

“All in good time,” he said. “I will take you within.” He held her arm as they left the pleasaunce and returned to Magdalen’s apartments.

She sighed with relief as he eased her down onto the bed.

“I will permit myself to feel feeble for one more week. Then I am determined to be quite well and strong again.”

“Remember that you are feeding the child, lady,” Erin said. “If you would put her to a wet nurse, you would regain your strength all the quicker.”

“That I will not do,” Magdalen declared with the firmness of one who has reiterated the statement many times.

“Then you must not complain,” Guy counseled. “I must leave you now, but I will return by vespers.” He kissed the top of her head. “Rest now.”

Half an hour later, with his knight companions, their squires, and a small troop of men-at-arms, he left the castle on a mission of intimidation. It was, as Magdalen had said, poor work for a knight, but it had to be done. He did not like doing it, however. The French peasantry were already over-burdened with the taxes that had been raised to pay for the long years of a war whose outcome affected them only in terms of how much depredation they had had to suffer, and many of the more substantial peasantry were still struggling to pay off the ransoms of their menfolk.

He could enjoy the ride, however. Spring had come late this year after a more than ordinarily wet winter, and the deeply rutted roads had been impassable for many weeks. Now, however, they were crowded with the usual medley of travelers. A merchant and his pack train moved cumbersomely to one side as the de Gervais herald blew imperatively for passage, but around the next corner the de Gervais party gave right of way to a courier wearing the tabard of the papal court of Avignon, galloping with his escort as if escaping the devils of hell. A pardoner, with his bag of papal indulgences, sat in the budding hedgerow, enjoying the sunshine and touting for traveling custom among peripatetic sinners. They passed a peddler whose sack hung open on his back, and Guy drew rein, attracted by a wooden doll with painted eyes and a tiny doll carriage designed to be drawn by mice. It was absurd to buy such a toy for a little girl as yet but two weeks old, but he did so, half embarrassed and half delighted, thinking how Magdalen would laugh at him.