Patricia Ryan - [Fairfax Family 01] (20 page)

“Can you help me?” she called. “Mama’s wedding gown is in the lake!”

“Her wedding gown?” he said. “Who’s she going to marry, then?”

“My father. Baron Jourdain of Rouen.”

The farmer laughed incredulously. “Child, His Lordship remarried last week. Her name is Blanche. Thirteen years old.” He shrugged. “Some men like them young.”

Martine stood in the icy water and watched him continue down the path, her emaciated body racked with shivers.

It would have been better, far better, had Papa been dead, as she had feared. That would have hurt, but it wouldn’t have approached the pain of knowing that he had turned his back on them, abandoned them. They meant nothing to him, less than nothing, if he would so casually cast them aside for this Blanche. This was what Adela had found out in the village, this was the cause of her despair. This was why she had discarded her wedding dress.

She shouldn’t have. It was exquisite, and she’d worked so hard on it. She deserved to keep it and wear it, even if Jourdain didn’t want to marry her.

Filling her lungs with air, Martine dove fully clothed into the lake to retrieve the dress. The water was brutally cold. Green silk billowed beneath the surface, surrounding her and enclosing her. With flailing arms she pushed it aside.

What she saw then would haunt her and torment her for the rest of her days. It was the face of a monster, the face of death, the face of terror.

It was the face of her mother, bobbing in the hellish cold mere inches from her own, her clouded eyes staring sightlessly into the wide and horrified eyes of her daughter. She looked like a demon from hell, all swollen and purple, her mouth agape, revealing a distended black tongue.

Martine gagged and choked, a blinding shriek of disbelief filling her skull. She tried to surface, but the green silk enveloped her like a cocoon, and she clawed and struggled against it. She saw the rope around her mother’s neck, and the sack of rocks it was tied to, and realized that she had died by her own hand, a grievous and unforgivable sin.

That revelation was her last coherent thought for some time. When her senses returned, she was sitting crouched in a corner of her cottage, her arms wrapped around her updrawn knees, listening to a man outside calling her name. Her clothes and hair were wet, and her throat felt painfully raw; she realized she must have been screaming. Her eyes, however, were dry, so she knew she hadn’t cried. But then, she had never been much for tears.

The man walked in through the door and frowned at her. It was the local priest, fat little Father Tancred.

Without preface, he said, “We can’t bury the body, I hope you realize that. Wouldn’t be proper, seeing as how she took her own life. She’s been dragged into the woods and left for the wolves. They’ll make short work of her, don’t you worry.”

Martine just stared, her throat far too sore for speech.

Father Tancred pursed his lips. “Don’t bother praying for her, it won’t do no good. She’s roasting in hell this very minute, and nothing you do can save her. If you must pray, pray for your own salvation, seeing as how you’ve got her wicked blood in your veins.”

Raising his eyebrows at her lack of response, he continued. “It isn’t safe for you to stay here all alone. Not all men are good and kind, like me. There’s some that’d take advantage of a girl like you. You know what I mean, don’t you?”

Martine didn’t so much as blink.

Nodding, the priest said, “Aye, you know what I mean. And then, afterward, you’d be no better than your mother. You know she died a whore, don’t you?”

He inspected her up and down with a look of disgust, and Martine considered how she must appear, skinny and hollow-eyed, her loose hair a damp, tangled mane. The priest lifted his black skullcap to smooth his own greasy yellow hair, then glanced out the window. Martine followed his line of sight to a curtained litter waiting in the harsh noon sun in front of the cottage. A woman’s bejeweled hand parted the brocade drapery and then quickly let it fall closed.

Father Tancred cleared his throat. “All them things the baron’s given you and your mum over the years, all them rings and bracelets and fancy baubles?” he glanced unerringly toward the trunk in the corner, its lid covered with half-melted candles. “You know there’s brigands that’d slit your throat for just one of them little pretties, don’t you? You’re not safe here. You’d best be getting along.”

He waited, but Martine made no move to rise.

“Get along,” he repeated, waving his plump hand. “Scat! Go!”

Where am I supposed to go?
Martine wondered.
This is my home. I have nowhere else to go.

The priest looked back toward the litter and shrugged. The pale hand with its many rings beckoned him impatiently and then yanked the curtain closed.

Licking his lips nervously, he edged toward the door. “You mark my words,” he said. “It’s not safe here for you. You be gone by nightfall, or most likely by tomorrow you’ll be burning in hell right alongside your mum.”

Alone once more, Martine rested her head on her knees and closed her eyes. For a long time she thought about what it would feel like when she died. Having her throat slit would be quick, but it would hurt. Starvation took a long time, but as she well knew, it had its own kind of peculiar, grinding pain.

But drowning—struggling for air, waiting for your lungs to fill with water—was inconceivably horrible to her. How her mother must have suffered, even though she chose her own fate. Despite Father Tancred’s command, she did try to pray for Adela’s soul, but found that no words would come from her throat.

Thinking she could hear the wails of the damned as they agonized in hell, she clapped her hands tightly over her ears.

Slowly she uncovered them. It wasn’t the damned, merely the whinny of horses. She opened her eyes. By the long shadows outside she could tell it was already late afternoon. She couldn’t see the horses, but she could hear the footsteps of a man on the packed earth outside the cottage.

Quick as a squirrel, she darted to her feet. Grabbing the big meat knife from its hook, she scrambled up the ladder to her loft and half buried herself in straw in the far corner.

She heard him enter the cottage, and then came a thump as he laid something heavy on their little trestle table. She sensed his curiosity as he looked around. The ladder squeaked as he stepped on the first rung, and then the next. Martine braced herself, the knife handle gripped tightly in both sweaty fists.

A black skullcap appeared, half covering a head of pale blond hair. The child tensed, ready to spring. And then she saw his face.

Martine sucked in her breath. It wasn’t Father Tancred at all. This priest was young, as young as her mother had been, and handsome.

He paused on the ladder, calmly inspecting first the knife and then her face. Finally he nodded. “My lady.”

He mocked her. Martine’s grip on the knife handle tightened.

As if he had read her mind, he said, “You’re the daughter of a baron, are you not? I only meant to show respect.”

He descended the ladder. “But if you’d prefer,” he continued from below, “I shall call you Martine.” She heard him unbuckle something—a leather satchel?—and then begin to empty things onto the table. “And you may call me Rainulf.”

Not “Father Rainulf”
? Thought Martine.

“Just Rainulf,” the priest said, again suggesting that he had plucked her thoughts right out of her head. “There’s no need for formality between brother and sister.”

Between
... For a few dazed moments, Martine sat perfectly still in her cocoon of straw.
Between brother and sister?

Finally she pushed the straw aside and, holding the knife at the ready, crept forward just far enough to peer over the edge of the loft.

Rainulf looked up at her. He was tall, and stood with the easy grace of the aristocrat. In one hand he held an apple. Behind him, on the table, were more apples, a loaf of white bread, a wedge of cheese, some pastries, some dried fruit, and a wineskin. Her mouth watered instantly at the sight of all that food, and she could do nothing to keep her eyes from widening in amazement.

“Will you join me for some supper?” Rainulf asked.

Biting her lip, she looked from the priest to the food and back again, then backed up, shaking her head.

After a thoughtful pause, he said, “My horse is very fond of apples. You don’t mind if I step outside to give him one?” She didn’t respond, and presently he turned and left.

Martine stared at the food for some time. Then, with her eye on the door and a tight grip on the knife, she climbed down the ladder and sidled up to the window. Outside, the priest stood with his back to her, feeding the apple to his chestnut stallion. Nearby had been tethered a petite gray mare and a packhorse to which had been harnessed a stretcher-litter. Bound to the litter was something wrapped up in bleached white linen... a shrouded corpse. Her mother? But they had dragged her mother into the woods. He must have retrieved the body and brought it here. Why?

Although her mind reeled with questions, the ripe aroma of the cheese soon drew her to the table. With her eyes on the man in the front yard, and her hand still clutching the knife, she picked up the wedge and bit off a generous mouthful. Its taste flooded her senses, and she took another bite before swallowing the first. The pastries tempted her next, and she grabbed one and made short work of it, and then an apple. Dropping the knife, she ripped off a hunk of bread with trembling hands and ate it greedily, following that with a handful of chewy little figs. She uncorked the wineskin and squeezed it into her mouth, finding it filled with sweet apple cider. She gulped it down breathlessly, then reached once more for the cheese.

It was then that her stomach, empty for so long and now so swiftly engorged, began to heave in protest. Fingers of icy cold crawled up her back, and her head swam sickeningly. She staggered on quaking legs to her mother’s narrow rope bed, dropped to her knees, and fumbled beneath it for the chamber pot. Hunching over the clay vessel, she whimpered as her stomach contracted.

Suddenly he was there, kneeling behind her, gathering her hair with one hand while the other firmly cradled her head. She groaned in despair, fighting the inevitable.

“Easy, now,” he said soothingly. “Let it come.”

It did, of course. Afterward, he sat her on the bed and patted her face with a damp cloth. “We must get you into some dry clothes, and then you can try eating again, slowly this time.”

He took a fresh kirtle off its hook, brought it to her, and squatted down so that their heads were level. Softly he said, “I know you found your mother’s body. ‘Tis little wonder you’ve been struck dumb. It’s all right with me if you don’t talk. I’m a teacher, so I’m quite capable of carrying on a perfectly adequate conversation with no help from anyone.”

He smiled and patted her arm, then stood and deliberately turned his back to her. As Martine undressed, he said, “Your arms are like sticks. When I first saw you up there in that loft, I was half tempted to give you last rites. But then I saw that knife, and the spark in your eyes. God might be ready for Martine, I thought, but Martine doesn’t seem quite ready for Him.”

Martine tossed her wet kirtle aside and shook out the dry one. Could this grown-up, this priest, really be her brother?

“You have two brothers,” he said, and this time the child hardly even noticed his intrusion into her thoughts, so natural did it seem. “Half-brothers, of course. We’re Jourdain’s sons by his late wife, our lady mother Odelina.” His back still turned, he made a solemn sign of the cross. “Etienne is the eldest, and our father’s heir, naturally. I teach logic and theology at the University of Paris. I’ve been in Rouen for the past fortnight, for my father’s nuptials.”

As Martine contorted herself to lace up the back of her kirtle, a service her mother had always performed for her, Rainulf explained that he had known about her since she was a baby, but few others were privy to her existence. When word of Adela’s death came to Jourdain’s castle earlier that day, Rainulf had inquired of his father whether Martine would be provided for. The baron told him that he had been forced to abandon the child and her mother as a condition for marrying the lady Blanche, an orphaned heiress to vast holdings. His powerful overlord, Blanche’s great-uncle, had refused to permit the union, which would double Jourdain’s holdings, unless he severed all communication with his mistress and bastard daughter.

In her mind’s eyes, Martine saw her father, larger than life and bright as the sun, thunder out of the woods and sweep her up, pressing her to his massive chest.
My little Martine
, he always said,
how Papa has missed you!

Rainulf had turned and was watching her, his eyes sad. “I don’t pretend to know why he went along with it, why he left you to...” He shook his head. “God knows the varieties of human weakness better than I.”

Jourdain weak?
thought Martine.
‘Tis Mama and I who were weak. We let him use us. No one will ever use me again. No man will ever do to me what Papa did to Mama.

Rainulf led her to the table, soaked a piece of bread with cider, and told her to eat it slowly.

“I understand Father Tancred paid you a visit earlier,” he said. Martine glanced at him, and what he saw in her eyes made him nod in understanding. Quite soberly he said, “What you must try to understand about Father Tancred is that he’s an ass.”