Enchantress Mine (64 page)

Their captain had thanked Josselin, and the lord of Aelfleah suspected that Sister Frideswide would reach her destination in record time, much to the regret of her bottom. The nun and her escort thundered off, and Josselin turned to observe the first meeting of the half-sisters. For a long moment the two women stood and looked at one another. Young Blanchette was modestly attired in indigo blue, her russet hair hanging in two braids. Her head was covered with a simple white veil.

“Welcome to Aelfleah, sister,” Mairin said quietly.

“Do you look like our father?” Blanchette asked. “I always wondered what he looked like.”

“Yes, I look a little like him, but I also have some of my mother’s features too. Our father was a handsome man. You have his eyes, and your hair is his color.” Mairin drew the girl into an embrace. Then she set her back gently. “Come, let us go into the house. There is a wind today in the valley and the air is chilly. I would not have you ill after such a journey.”

“Did our father love you very much? Do you think he would have loved me also?” There was a poignancy to Blanchette’s questions.

“Did your mother not tell you of our father?” Mairin asked.

Blanchette sighed and shook her head. “She would not speak of him except on rare occasions. She said it distressed her too much, but my nurse, Melaine, said that he was a good man.”

“Melaine was your nurse? She was mine also! How is she? Does she still live? What of old Catell? Did you know her also?”

“The witch woman?” Blanchette seemed horrified. “She was condemned to be burned when I was four, but when they went into the Argoat to take her, she was not there, and to my knowledge, she was never seen again. They said that the devil came for her, and took her away.”

“More than likely she escaped them to move to another part of the forest,” said Mairin dryly. “She was an amazing old woman with a great knowledge of healing.”

“You knew her?” Blanchette’s deep blue eyes were round with fascination.

“Aye, I knew her. She taught me many things having to do with herbs and healing. She was an interesting old lady, but what of Melaine?”

“She still lives. It was through her I first learned of your existence, although mother never knew I knew. Melaine said that my mother sent you away before I was born because she claimed you were bastard-born. The queen says you are not, and that Landerneau belongs to you, not me. I am so glad! I never liked Landerneau. It always frightened me, surrounded by the forest as it is. Except that Hugo died of the measles, we were to be married this coming summer, and I would have had to live there. I have always felt so guilty that you were sent away.”

Mairin led her young half-sister into the hall of the house and settled her by the fire, for the girl looked chilled. “Bring wine,” she ordered Nara who was hovering nearby. Then settling herself into a chair facing Blanchette, she said gently, “Melaine should not have told you about me. None of what happened between your mother and me was of your making. Like me you are innocent.”

“How old are you?” asked Blanchette.

“I will be twenty in six more days,” Mairin said. “When were you born, Blanchette?”

“I will be fourteen on the twenty-third of February next,” came the reply. Then Blanchette’s eyes grew round and her hand flew to her mouth to stifle a cry. “Holy Mother! You were only five when mama sent you from Landerneau. Oh, I am so ashamed! I am so ashamed!” and she began to cry.

For a moment, Mairin was stunned by the girl’s apparent depth of guilt over her mother’s behavior. Then with a sigh of resignation, she stood up and drew her half-sister into an embrace. “Do not weep, Blanchette,” she said quietly. “It was not your fault. Remember, you were not even born then.”

“She did not like me,” Blanchette sobbed. “She did not like me at all, and when Melaine had her second baby, mama called her back from the village so she could nurse me. Mama said no lady should allow her breasts to be spoilt by the constant tugging of a baby’s mouth, but Melaine said’twas unnatural for a woman not to want to nourish her own daughter.” Blanchette wept harder.

Damn Melaine, thought Mairin. She always did chatter too freely and without heed for the feelings of others. To her great surprise, Mairin heard herself saying, “I am sure that your mother loved you, Blanchette. Did she not arrange a fine match for you with a powerful and important family? It appears to me that she surely had your best interests at heart when she did that.”

Blanchette raised her tearstained face to her half-sister. “You are so good,” she said worshipfully. “How can you be so good after what mama did to you?”

Mairin’s arms dropped from about her sister, and she gently resettled the girl back in her chair before sitting down herself. It was plain that the girl had a desperate need for love, for she, poor child, had obviously never had any. Still, she did not want Blanchette idolizing her to the point of sainthood, for Mairin knew better than most her faults. “I am not good in the sense you imply, little one,” she began. “My mother was an Irish princess, a Celt in every sense. The Bretons are also a Celtic race, but their proximity to the rest of Europe has taken them further from their origins than the Irish. Do you see that large man with my husband? His name is Dagda, and he had the responsibility of raising my mother, and when she died, she put me into his care with our father’s approval. I will tell you his story one day, Blanchette, but for now, all you need know is that Dagda was once one of the most feared warriors in Ireland. He has raised me as a Celt, and we forgive nothing.

“I never forgave your mother her treatment of me. I longed to revenge myself upon her, and when the opportunity arose, I grasped at it like a drowning man grasps at a straw. At no time, however, was it my intention to hurt you. You are of my blood. As for your mother, that was a different case, but she might have escaped me except that in her own personal desperation, she made a fatal mistake.

“Your mother had met my husband several years prior to his coming to England with the king. When she learned of his good fortune, she managed to gain a place for herself amongst the queen’s ladies when the queen came to England to be crowned. She implied to the queen that Josselin would welcome her as his wife now that he had found his good fortune. My husband has known the queen since late boyhood, and she is fond of him. She believed she was doing Josselin a favor by transporting Blanche de St. Brieuc to England. You can imagine her deep embarrassment and her indignation when she learned otherwise.

“Josselin had never told me of this acquaintance with your mother, particularly having learned of her part in defrauding me of Landerneau. He thought that, as we would never meet, it was unnecessary to reveal the association, but finding her with the queen he confessed all to me, and it was then I decided to wreak my revenge upon
that
woman. I am no saint, Blanchette, as you can see.”

“You heard me, didn’t you?” Blanchette said softly. “You heard me calling to you for help! I know you did!”

“What?”
Mairin looked somewhat startled by the intensity in the girl’s voice.

“Melaine said you had the gift,” was Blanchette’s reply. “She said you could hear the voices on the wind, and that if I called to you, you would hear me because we are sisters.”

“And why did you want my help, Blanchette?” Mairin was quite fascinated, for she remembered how quite unbidden her sudden knowledge of her half-sister had come into her conscious mind. Could the girl reach out to her?

“Hugo died of measles, and when he did I realized that, although I would have wed with him, I really did not want to marry,” said Blanchette. “All of my life I have found myself drawn to the church. I have always been happiest in prayer, but when I spoke on it to mother once she told me that I was being foolish. She pointed out to me how lucky I was to be joining the Montgomerie family who are important and rich.

“Actually, they have always frightened me, for they are big, loud people, and they never speak softly when they can argue and shout. I was sent to them when I was just four, and the betrothal agreement was settled. Hugo was five then. He had three elder brothers, and a sister, Isabelle, who was my age at the time. His mother was always with child. There was a new little one every year until Hugo’s mother died in childbirth with a stillborn son. I was nine that year. My lord de Montgomerie rewed almost immediately, and the new wife took up where the old had left off, but she was a poor frail creature who died within two year’s time, having not been able to successfully produce a living child, though she lost three. Again Hugo’s father remarried, but this time, he chose a big healthy woman much like his first wife. She was a widow with six children of her own, and she brought them all to live at the castle which made it even more crowded and noisy. The lady Yvonne gave my lord Montgomerie a tenpound infant son in less than a year of marriage.” Blanchette shuddered nervously with her memories, and sipped for a moment on her wine before continuing her tale. “Then a measles epidemic swept the castle. Hugo, Isabelle, and three of the lady Yvonne’s children all died of it. I, and several of the others who had been ill, survived.

“When finally everything was back to normal, the lord de Montgomerie realized that with Hugo dead, I was no longer bound to his family. He was ready to send me back to Landerneau, for he had no more sons not already betrothed, and I was just another mouth to feed. Then the lady Yvonne suggested that I be matched with her second son, Gilles, who had not yet been betrothed. It was no wonder. He was a horrible boy whose head was too big for his body. He was always trying to catch girls alone. I told the lady Yvonne that, although I would have honored the marriage agreement that my mother had made for me with Hugo de Montgomerie when we were children, since I was free of that entanglement I preferred to dedicate my life to God and enter a convent. She beat me, and locked me in a tower room with only bread and water for weeks. She said I would stay there until I changed my mind. Each day she would come to demand my consent to a match between her son and me. Each day I refused, and was beaten for that refusal. Finally after several weeks I was released, but everyone in the castle treated me like a pariah.

“It was then, Mairin, that I remembered what Melaine had told me about you before I left Landerneau. That you had a gift, and were a magical creature, perhaps even an enchantress like the great sorcerer Merlin’s lover, Viviane. I tried to reach out to you, to tell you of my plight, and of how very much I wanted to give myself to God. I thought surely God could not punish me for seeking the only aid I knew available to me. I felt that if I was wrong, God would show me the error of my ways, but, instead, there came word from the head of the de Montgomerie family, and from Queen Matilda herself, that I was to be sent to the queen at Caen. That I was to be allowed to dedicate my life to the church.

“I knew then that you had heard me. That you understood, and that you had helped me. The queen told me that my mother was dead. She gave me the first official word I had ever had of you, and she told me that you knew of my desire to give myself to God. She said that you had offered, out of pure generosity, to dower me into the convent of my choice. Then she asked me if I should like to be received into her very own Abbey of the Holy Trinity with her own little daughter, Cecily. Oh, Mairin! I could not remember ever having been so happy! The little princess and I were to have gone into the convent this past summer, but she has been ill, and so the queen decided to wait until next summer to send us.

“When I learned that, I asked the queen if I might be allowed to come to England to meet you. I have no other close relatives, for our father’s family is gone, and I never knew my mother’s family except for one funny old bishop who died years ago. I hope you are not angry with me for coming.”

“Nay,” said Mairin quietly. “I do not think there is anything you might do, Blanchette, that would anger me.” She reached out and patted her half-sister’s hand, thinking all the while how strange it was that this poor little waif had reached out to someone she had not known at all, could not have been certain was still alive. “When you called out to me,” she said to the girl, “did you not consider the possibility that I might be dead?”

“Oh, no! I knew that you were alive!”

“How?” demanded Mairin.

Blanchette shrugged. “I just knew,” she said.

Mairin smiled. “It is possible,” she said, “that you also have a gift of sorts, little sister.”

“Nay!” came the quick denial. “It would not be proper and godly for me to have such ability.”

Mairin could not help but chuckle at her sister’s reply. The child considered it perfectly proper to reach out with her mind to Mairin, but rejected the idea that in being able to do so she might have that same gift that allowed her elder sister to hear her. This, however, was not the time to argue such fine points with Blanchette, whom Mairin suspected as being woefully ill-educated. Growing up as one of a litter of many children in a large Norman castle, she knew, did not guarantee formal knowledge. There was time to learn all she needed to know though, and so for now she would simply make the girl feel welcome.

“I am glad you are here at Aelfleah, Blanchette, my sister,” she said. “This is where I grew up after I left Landerneau, and this lady is the mother who raised me.” Mairin reached out and took Eada’s hand as she approached her daughter’s chair. She had heard most of Blanchette’s story. “This is the lady Eada. Mother, how would you have Blanchette address you?”

“I would have her call me mother as do you and Josselin,” came the reply. “Poor child! Your life has not been an easy one, has it? Well, you are safe in the bosom of your real family now, and we shall try to make you happy while you are with us.” She looked down at Mairin and said pointedly, “Have I not been tellng you how fortunate you are to be so surrounded with love, my daughter? And here is poor Blanchette who has been so alone all of her young life.”