Forbidden Forest (11 page)

Margaret's dowry had been slim, but the treasures she brought with her on marrying were not what tempted this knight, as Bridgit had explained. “Your beauty has run him through,” Bridgit had said.

As was proper, her new husband kissed her once again, took her hand, and uttered words of his great love for her with all the guests gazing on. Margaret knew other women had heard such words murmured, but she had never understood what it was like to have the breath on her own ear, the love all hers.

Her gown was decorated with a ring brooch, set with red rubies and ice-blue sapphires, that had belonged to her mother, and her sleeves, with long and sweeping points, reached nearly to the floor. The outer garment she wore, gown and surcoat, was the finest draper's art, silk that rustled when she so much as took a deep breath. Her husband was lifting a cup as she watched, and draining it and looking around, searching for her, finding her with his eyes.

Players made music on reed pipes, a red-faced man playing a recorder and a man with one blind eye fingering a stringed rebec. The melody was punctuated by a drum that had been hung with bells so that it chimed with every beat. Small kettledrums called nakers, hung from a player's wrists, and a small leather-skinned tabor all encouraged dancing. Some of the musicians were attendants at one of the great houses of Nottingham, hired for the wedding feast, and others were wandering folk. “We cannot have too fine a noise,” her father had said.

Roebuck venison was served, and fallow deer purchased specially from the royal foresters, and veal, and infant pig and acorn-fed sow and boar spitted and gilded over the fire. Both green wine and red were plentiful, and golden ale brewed by the priory, fresh and not like the everyday brew, which was little better than fermented porridge.

The Heavenly Host knew, as Margaret did then, that ordinary days, with cheese rinds and candle stubs, were all chaff, nothing, to be swept aside. Only such feasts mattered, and a daughter seeing her father—and a bride her new husband—with newborn eyes.

From within herself Margaret cast a vision of joy out onto the people around her. And she did not forget to offer a prayer to Saint Anne, the patron saint of wives who wished to conceive.

That night Margaret bathed.

This was her first visit to the bedchamber that would be hers, and she was hushed by the light of the many beeswax candles, their honey perfume brightening the air. A basin was set on the wooden floor, and house servants poured ewers of steaming water into it, their steps crackling over the alder leaves on the floor. Thin bay leaves and rose petals were sprinkled into the vaporous water under Bridgit's direction.

Bridget was no longer in the girdle and headpiece she had worn during the wedding, and yet she gazed at the servants so imperiously that they lowered their gazes before her and kept silent.

“It will be too hot,” said Margaret when they were alone.

Bridgit arranged the wedding finery carefully on a clothes rack as she helped Margaret step out of it, down to her softest linen garments, the ones next to her skin.

“My lady will be pleased to let the water be so warm,” she said in her most Parisian-sounding voice.

“Spoken like the cook to the stewing hen,” said Margaret in the same accent.

Bridgit smiled, but she did not laugh.

“I won't sit in that,” said Margaret.

Chapter 21

Often the newlyweds of Nottingham were cheered by a rowdy congregation of friends, maiden wife and blushing husband both burrowing under sheets to the accompaniment of the ribald songs of their neighbors. But Sir Gilbert kept his guests downstairs and entertained them into the night, the songs and singers well out of Margaret's sight.

Newly washed, and not used to the feeling, Margaret pulled the fine Frankish blankets up to her chin. “I'm sleeping in a room just behind the door at the end of the hall,” said Bridgit, with a meaningful glance. She meant both that she was close, if Margaret needed comfort, and also that this house was so grand, it had an upstairs hall that led to so many rooms that one could get lost. The bedchamber itself had an outer room, where the master of the house could admire his appearance in a gilded metal mirror.

Not many dwellings outside the sheriff's castle had staircases, a fact that had been noted in explaining overwrought Phillipa's tumble down the entire flight of broad wooden stairs, cracking her skull. Few men and women were accustomed to treading high stairs.

Margaret was left alone, brilliant candlelight all around.

At the foot of the bed was her walnut-wood marriage chest, full of the treasures she and her father had saved up for years, for the dreamed-of day when she was a wife. She knew the inventory by heart: a bolt of black say, a fine cloth; several ells of
serge de Ghent
, another fine fabric; a fine gold necklace with a pearl full unblemished that had belonged to her mother; and other treasures her father had scarcely been able to afford, including a nest of brass spicer's weights.

Her eyes brimmed with tears as she remembered William's care in helping her assemble these treasures over the years. She loved her father, as she would learn to love her husband.

I am a wife
.

At some point in the night the candles burned low. One of them, trapped in a draft through an unseen rent in the house's timbering, guttered and went out. Margaret, feeling already the mistress of her room, if not the entire house, rose and snuffed nearly all the fine candles, leaving only two burning. Celebrants downstairs were dancing to a clapping of hands and a half-shouted, half-sung ballad.

Much whooping and laughter meant that the guests were probably playing a drinking game, perhaps the one that had the would-be champion lying on his back while his friends poured wine into a funnel in his mouth. The sound of cheers from below announced a winner. She recognized the rough voices of Hal and Lionel, joined together in a song about a priest who had to ride a goose across a swollen river. Margaret knew the ballad—it had about twenty verses.

When she woke she was surprised that she had slept at all, and ashamed. The new bride should await the husband—it was something she recalled from one of Father Joseph's homilies, comparing Holy Church to a bride awaiting the bridegroom, steadfast, true.

When she woke again the house was silent. Not perfectly—the rise and fall of quiet snoring echoed faintly throughout the dwelling.

The house remained still until a dull blue seeped through the crack in the window shutters and a bright-voiced bird began to sing.

For a long while Margaret did not give way to any feeling but one of wifely patience. She had heard of wedding parties that went on for days. The bridegroom would be swept along in celebrations that ran to other villages, with cockfights and marathon bouts of wine swilling, while the bride, serene in her chamber, would await her husband at the threshold.

But when the singing bird was joined by another, a woodcock announcing the new day, she did allow herself to feel a dash of curiosity. It was only curiosity, she told herself, nothing more. Certainly she was not impatient—not a bit. Servants would arise soon and begin to mop up the pork bones and venison shanks and spilled wine.

She rose and tiptoed across the chamber. When her toes touched wet on the floor, she gave a sigh of exasperation. A bath was all very well, she wanted to explain to Bridgit, but the spilled bathwater left broad, cold puddles.

One very large puddle stretched from where she stood to the crack under the door.

She knelt and put out one hesitant hand. What she touched was not water. And it was not spilled wine, or urine from a tumbled chamber pot.

It was blood.

Chapter 22

Sir Gilbert was lying on his belly with his arms at his side, his head turned, his eyes open.

He did not breathe. When she spoke into his ear—“
Husband!
”—he made no movement.

A jet-handled knife was buried to the hilt in his back, just below his fine miniver collar. Margaret knelt and told Sir Gilbert that he did not need to fear, that she was here and all injury done to him would be made well.

But even as she said this, she began to pray in her heart for the soul of her departed husband. She wrapped her fingers around the hilt. This was a rare, rich weapon, and one so delightful to the eye that she half believed the wound it made could not be mortal, even as she withdrew it, with effort, and saw the unbleeding, precise hole.

She hurried down the hall.

The house was a choir of snores—deep, sonorous breathing, rasping inhalation. Each door was shut tight, and each portal was identical to all the others. Trapped and friendless, Margaret nearly fainted, her breath shivering in and out of her body, her hands trembling.

And then she forbade herself to give in to such feelings. She prayed to be strong and full of faith. She hesitated before each door once again, until she came to a door at the end of the hall.

“What have you done?” asked Bridgit. “Margaret, Heaven help us!” She put her hands on Margaret's shoulders, looking into the bride's eyes.

“Sir Gilbert—” Margaret knew that one word, or two, and all harm would be undone, the day made bright and sound again.

“He hurt you and you fought him back,” said Bridgit, closing her bedchamber door firmly behind her. She was in her morning robe, a flowing, voluminous garment.

“No, he never came to me—” Margaret allowed herself to see the knife in her hand, the blood on her nightdress. She could not make another sound.

“It cannot be so bad as it appears,” said Bridgit.

It is far worse. Margaret could not say this, but willed the words through the dark dawn light, into Bridgit's heart.

“God's teeth,” said Bridgit, cursing like a fighting man.

“He is still warm,” said Bridgit.

“Sometimes a surgeon shakes a stricken person,” said Margaret, her voice barely a whisper, “and the breath awakens in the dying body.”

“No shaking will stir Sir Gilbert, my lady.”

Margaret wept, trembling so hard she nearly dropped the fine, slender blade in her hands.

Bridgit raised a hand, telling her to hush. She listened, her head to one side. “The house is pork-drunk,” she said.

Margaret could barely understand a word Bridgit was saying.

“They are stiff with wine, my lady,” said Bridgit.

“Bridgit, awaken the servants.”

“We will get into our clothes without a sound.”

Margaret steadied her voice. “Have the porter run for the sheriff's men—”

“Hush!”

“A murderer is in the streets,” said Margaret, “and we must have him in chains, Bridgit, before he escapes.”

“Put down the knife, my lady,” said Bridgit.

The thing was sticky. Margaret shuddered—this blood would never wash clean, halfway up her arms.

Bridgit put a firm, dry hand over Margaret's mouth.

“They will think you have killed him, my lady,” she said. “Or Henry the deputy will say I have done it. We must speak to your father.”

Whenever there was a murder in the kingdom, the local sheriff appointed five knights to investigate the crime and determine the guilty party. There was no other regular means for discovering guilt or innocence. Margaret knew that with so many knights at war in the Holy Land, any person even remotely under suspicion would be wise to seek refuge in a monastery or some other place of sanctuary until the murder could be solved.

Not only should she and Bridgit seek a safe place, but William Lea, too, should be warned. Otherwise a deceitful deputy such as Henry would squeeze money from all of them or, even worse, turn them over to Nottingham's rack until confessions could be tortured loose.

The two women dressed quietly, each in a simple gown and hood. Margaret was obedient under the ministering touch of Bridgit, but burning with questions and trembling.

Dressing took very little time, and then, cocking her head every few moments to listen, Bridgit opened the marriage chest. She rummaged briefly through the contents. Spying the ruby-and-sapphire ring brooch on a side table, she pressed it into Margaret's pouch. Then she led the way out of the chamber and down the stairs.

The dining hall was like a battlefield, the wine-slain sprawled and unmoving. On the benches, on the broad wooden tables, snoring men lay inert and gaping, vomit and spilled wedding wine in the rushes scattered thickly over the floor. A torpid figure had blood on his sleeves—Hal, Margaret thought, or perhaps Lionel. One of the wine-stunned guests was Henry, and he alone was stirring, blinking, trying to lift his head.

Bridgit whispered, “Follow me, my lady, and never make a sound.”

It was only as they approached the spicery, the home of Margaret's father, that they began to hear the
chink, chink
of chain mail behind them in the otherwise empty street.

When they turned to look back, there was no one.

Bridgit pounded on the door to the spicery, knelt to squint into the keyhole, and pounded again.

Hygd opened the door just a crack, blinking in the early morning light, and Bridgit thrust her out of the way. “Go rouse your master and tell him your ladyship needs to speak with him.”

Hygd gaped.

“This very moment, Hygd,” said Bridgit, “if you would be so kind as to move your arms and legs.”

“Good Bridgit, my lady—” began Hygd, looking from one to the other.

“Look at poor Hygd, staring around,” said Bridgit, trying to soften her impatience. “Hygd, we're not ghosts, we're two living folk—”

“Master William took to horse,” said Hygd, “just before the first bird.”

“Where did he go?” asked Bridgit, seizing Hygd's shoulder.

Hygd stood straight, bearing the pain of Bridgit's grip. “He said he hired a good horse. And he said, ‘Blessings on you, good Hygd. I have lived to be a happy man.' And I heard the hooves as he set forth riding fast.”