Almost Innocent (34 page)

But as he continued on his way, his reflections, prompted by the thought of Zoe, turned to more disturbing matters. The bad weather had meant that they had lived without much news of the outside world, since travelers and pilgrims stayed beside their hearths when snow drifted thick or the rain churned the roads and lanes into a mire. As soon as conditions had made it feasible, he had sent a messenger to London, to John of Gaunt, with news of his granddaughter’s birth, but he could not expect a response for another month. The response would contain further commands for the prince’s vassal, he was certain.

The isolation made him restless, and with the budding trees and the busily building birds had come the need to venture into the outside world again, to discover what was going on in the circles of power he had inhabited in the past. His overlord would not leave him forever as proxy suzerain of the de Bresse fiefdom. In
fact, it could be said his present task was accomplished. The castle was securely held, its chatelaine well established, a healthy heir in the nursery. Charles of France could stake no legitimate claim now. And all messages from Olivier indicated that the de Beauregards had other fish to fry; their interest in their cousin died beside a series of intrigues involving a bridegroom for Philippe de Beauregard’s daughter.

The Duke of Lancaster must surely now have another use for Guy de Gervais. He would also have a husband in mind for the Lady de Bresse, who could not be left husbandless for much longer.

With the news of the birth of Zoe, Guy de Gervais had included a request to wed the child’s widowed mother. He had decided he had nothing to lose by making the request, although he was well aware that Magdalen of Lancaster was too valuable a prize to be given away for nothing, and as he had thought before, he had nothing left to give Lancaster that his overlord did not already possess.

He said none of this to Magdalen, who seemed not to recognize the inevitability of an end to their idyll. She ignored his hints that she would soon have another husband, behaving as if such a thing were inconceivable, and he did not know how to break through such self-deception. But if he were honest, he had not chosen to break through it. He had told himself she should be left to enjoy a serene pregnancy and, now, that she should have peace and quiet in which to convalesce. But he was going to have to face up to the task sooner rather than later.

They were dispiriting thoughts to take on a May Day ride through the spring countryside, and it was a severe countenance he showed to the recalcitrant villagers of Seriac. Their spokesman, the village elder, faltered beneath the lord’s impassive, blue-eyed stare as he sat his horse outside the tavern, listening apparently unmoved, to the tale of crops lost through brigandage and
the destruction of the copse that hitherto had supplied the village with sufficient wood for all its needs.

Lord de Gervais looked around the circle of anxious men and women, small children clinging to skirts, peeping out at the magnificent, terrifying party of armored knights wearing over their mailshirts the blue and silver jupons emblazoned with the golden dragon of Gervais, carrying their great swords and lances at rest atop their majestic horses. The village elder had fallen silent, pulling unhappily on his straggly white beard, shuffling his clogs in the dust.

Nothing would be gained by wringing from these already wrung withers the last drops of sweat and blood and tears, Guy realized. They must be given time to sow new crops, to find an alternative wood supply. But they must also pay some tribute to their overlord. He would take the tribute in labor, Guy decided. Two days a month from every able-bodied man over the age of sixteen.

The villagers received the judgment initially in a stunned silence. They had expected no mercy; it was not a quality of life in this war-ravaged land. But slowly the realization that they had been granted a respite seeped through. Smiles, blackened or toothless but all genuine, appeared on the weary faces. Hands reached up to touch the dragon of Gervais embroidered on the lord’s blue and silver saddlecloth, the braided mane of his palfrey, the gleaming silver of his harness.

Guy was not unused to the wondering worship of peasants. It had been accorded him when sieges had been lifted, villages rescued from brigands, isolated farms and cottages offered protection. Such grateful reverence was a knight’s due in return for his obligation to offer such services to the defenseless. But he quickly grew impatient, and after a final word to the village elder, he signaled to the herald to blow the note of departure. The party wheeled and left the village of Seriac.

They arrived at the Castle de Bresse just as the bell
for vespers was ringing. Guy paused only to divest himself of the sword and dagger at his belt, both of which he gave to Geoffrey, before hurrying into the chapel, followed by the rest of the party. Magdalen was sitting at the front, before the altar rail, and he could sense an extraordinary strain in her body as he slid into the pew beside her.

She gave him a taut smile and handed him a parchment. It bore the seal of Lancaster. Frowning, he put it unopened beside him on the bench, as if reproving her for bringing such temporal matters into this holy place in the middle of the evening office. But the white parchment seemed to take on a glowing illumination, to become a menacing presence as it sat between them. Once or twice, he was aware that she touched it, tracing the seal with a fingertip.

It was the first communication from England since the winter storms had put an end to sea travel, and Magdalen knew that it boded ill. She had wanted to open it, but the messenger had said it was for the eyes of the Lord de Gervais. He said he had been overlong upon the road, that his ship had gone aground off the coast of Brittany, that he had barely escaped with his life. He had been desperately anxious that the Lady Magdalen should understand the difficulties and dangers attendant upon his journey and should acknowledge that he had now discharged his duty by the safe delivery of the duke’s message to the suzerain of de Bresse, even though it was delivered four weeks later than it should have been. Knowing her father, Magdalen could only sympathize with the messenger’s anxiety.

She had wanted to open it but had not had the courage, too inhibited by the scruples of conscience that forbade prying into the affairs of others, for all that she knew the message must concern her. It was for this reason that she had brought it into the chapel, hoping that Guy would waste no time in opening it. Instead, he had
simply laid it down and frowned at her, so she sat discomfited and overweaningly anxious as the rolled parchment seemed to burn against her thigh through the fine material of her gown.

Father Vivian droned through the office. Magdalen knelt, stood, prayed as her neighbor did, without thought or concentration, anxious only for the end of the tiresome ritual. It came at last. Father Vivian pronounced the benediction, and Guy tucked the parchment into his belt and moved out of the pew, offering Magdalen his arm when he reached the aisle. She tried to hurry, but she was prevented by the measured pace he set as they preceded the rest of the household into the beginning dusk.

“I wanted to open it, but I thought it might have vexed you,” she said breathlessly, as soon as they reached the court.

“I am glad you restrained yourself,” he replied. “Such an act would undoubtedly have displeased me. And you can have had no reason for doing such a thing.”

“But what does it say?”

“How can I know that when I haven’t yet opened it?” He paused to say a few words to the seneschal who had followed them from the chapel, while Magdalen stood in a fever of impatience at his side, wondering how he could be so calm and apparently untroubled by that burning, malevolent paper bearing her father’s seal, pushed so casually into his belt.

“I will go to my study,” he announced finally. “Geoffrey, attend me. I would remove this chainmail and my sword belt before supper.”

“May I not come too?” Magdalen could not believe he would exclude her.

But Guy wanted to read it alone. It must have been sent some time before he had dispatched his own messenger to Lancaster, and he needed to know in private whether its contents obviated his own request to
wed the widow. He did not think he could handle Magdalen’s response to whatever was contained in the message until he had handled his own.

“You may come to me in my study in twenty minutes,” he said. “I wish to refresh myself first.” He strode off on the words, Geoffrey following him, leaving Magdalen standing openmouthed in the court.

With a muttered exclamation that was not in the least seemly, she went up to her own apartments. She had been feeling much stronger after an afternoon’s rest, but now tears prickled ridiculously behind her eyelids. They were tears of weakness, she knew well, having found them most inconveniently frequent since Zoe’s birth. It took little to trigger them, and her present apprehension and hurt were sufficient spur.

In the seclusion of his study, Guy forced himself to wait until Geoffrey had taken his mailshirt and sword belt, poured him wine, and left the room before opening the duke’s letter.

Its message was short and clear: Edmund de Bresse had survived the assault last summer, had recovered from his wounds in a nearby abbey, and had returned to the Savoy in February. He had then been taken ill again but was now well on the way to full health and strength. It had not been possible to convey these glad tidings to Edmund’s wife earlier because of winter travel restrictions, but Edmund de Bresse was shortly taking ship for France to resume his duties as grand seigneur of Bresse. On his arrival, Lancaster ordered the immediate return of his dearly beloved vassal, Guy de Gervais.

Guy stood immobile for many minutes, holding the document, staring sightlessly at the stone wall of the chamber. If Lancaster had presented another prospective husband, he might have been able to press his own suit, counting on the duke’s longstanding friendship. But the reappearance of Magdalen’s husband left him in the falsest of false positions. He had been Edmund’s
guardian and mentor since the lad was ten years old, and Edmund was entitled to expect only honest dealings and true faith from his uncle. Instead, that uncle had cuckolded him, albeit unwittingly, and bred a bastard child on the body of his wife.

A shudder of self-loathing went through him, leaving him cold and sick, as he had not been since the first time he had killed. He had been a young page at Poitiers, but had grown to manhood in the few short hours of that battle.

He knew now only that he must leave this place without delay, must leave the woman who had entranced him with her passion and her beauty and her willful determination to follow the path of her choice: must leave his child, leave her to the man who by rights should have sired her. He must leave this place of sin and the woman who had led him into sin, must seek absolution, and, shriven once again, he must start life afresh.

And the prospect of that life filled him with the deepest desolation, stretching ahead into an infinite wasteland. A fitting punishment for his sin. He would do penance every day of the rest of his life.

The door opened without ceremony, startling him. He swung round to face it.

“What is it?” Magdalen went deathly white as she saw his face . . . so unlike his face, a mask obliterating all the life, the love, the humor she knew so well. Her hand went to her throat, plucked at the strand of pearls she wore. “Guy, what has happened?”

He saw the woman who had brought him to this, who had brought them both to it, with her intemperate passion, her blind and selfish pursuit of her own desires. And he recoiled.

Magdalen felt the recoil like a blow. Uncomprehending, terrified of what she did not understand, she stood staring at him. “Please . . . I beg you, my lord . . . tell me what has happened.” The
whispered plea seemed to stick in her throat, and she massaged the slim column with long, restless fingers.

Guy forced himself to focus on her, to see her distress, to remember her present physical frailty, and as he did so, his love rose strong and invincible again. “Come here,” he said gently, opening his arms to her.

She seemed to collapse in his embrace, shaking with a terror she could not define, a terror brought about by the look she had seen in his eyes.

He held her securely as he told her of her father’s missive. “You may expect your husband here at any time,” he finished, his voice as expressionless as it had been throughout.

Magdalen drew back, tilting her head to look up at him. Now that she understood, she was filled with a great calm. “I knew Edmund was not dead. Indeed, I have tried to tell you so many times.”

“How could you have known it?”

She shrugged. “I did. But when I brought up the subject, you became so wretched it seemed easier to leave it alone.”

A sudden stab of apprehension, of premonition, lodged cold in his soul. “You understand what this means, Magdalen?”

“It is difficult,” she said, “but I have thought long about what I must tell Edmund—”

“You will tell him nothing!” he interrupted in horror, unable to grasp truly what she was saying. “I will leave here as soon as your husband arrives. He will know nothing . . .
nothing.
Is it understood?”

She shook her head with that stubbornness he knew so well, her eyes clear and amazingly untroubled. “No, you do not understand. I cannot live without you, Guy, and we will manage this as others manage it. My father lives openly with Katherine Swynford. She has borne his bastards. There are others, so many others—”

“You do not know what you are saying!” His voice
was harsh with shock and revulsion. “You are dishonored, your husband is dishonored, I am dishonored by what has happened between us. Your husband has the right to take your life and mine for the shame visited upon him, and I would not deny him that right. But there is no reason that he should be made to suffer. No one apart from ourselves and your women knows of this. It will die now . . . as if it had never been.” But he knew as he said it that it could never be as if it had never been.