Patricia Ryan - [Fairfax Family 01] (22 page)

Martine threw a smug look of triumph her brother’s way as she tugged her glove back on, but he just shook his head and nudged his horse into a walk.

She soon regretted having insisted on the trip. These old woods made for slow traveling. At first Thorne led them along a meandering creek, the banks of which were sparsely treed and easily ridden on. But when the creek veered east and they continued north through the dense woods themselves, the ride quickly became tiresome. Certainly no one, not even hunters, had been in this part of the forest for years.

Finally the woods opened up into an overgrown clearing. On the edge of it, shaded by an enormous old tree, stood a thatched mud and stone dwelling almost completely covered with clinging vines. Martine looked toward Thorne, whose neutral expression revealed nothing. He dismounted, as did Martine and Rainulf, then removed the horses’ bridles and hobbled them in a grassy patch by a narrow little stream.

Rainulf partially unloaded the packhorse. He set the two baskets housing Loki and Freya on the ground near a chopping block, then unrolled a rug on the grass and brought out their cheese, bread, and wine. Martine retrieved her cat, who instantly leaped from her arms and darted straight for the cottage, disappearing into it.

“Loki!” She followed him to the door, pushing aside the weathered bear pelt that covered it.

There were two rooms connected by a doorway from which a deerskin curtain had fallen down. The back room, essentially a straw-filled shed, had probably served as a stable. From within it, Martine could hear the furious rustling of straw. Of course—what better attraction to a cat than an abandoned stable. It must be teeming with vermin.

She stepped into the front room and looked around. There was plenty of light to see by, since the skins tacked over the windows had mostly rotted away. Near one wall stood a large board on stumps flanked by two benches, furred with dust. Three straw pallets, draped with wolf pelts, had been stacked in a corner.

Various implements and household items were scattered around the clay-lined cooking hole in the middle of the earthen floor: an ax with a broken handle, a cracked wooden trencher, an enormous iron kettle pitted with rust...

Separated from this debris, alone in its own empty corner, was something quite remarkable, and Martine crossed the room to examine it more closely. It was a cradle crafted of smooth, dark wood, the headboard carved in an intricate geometric pattern surrounding a central cross. Draped over it, as if to protect a baby from the dust, was a neatly hemmed square of coarse woolen cloth, its color obscured by age. Martine crouched and reached out to pull the cloth aside, then hesitated, contemplating what she might find beneath it. Curiosity won out, though, and she turned back the little blanket, gasping at what she found.

The face of an infant stared back at her with unblinking eyes. In shock, Martine stood and retreated a step before realizing that the baby’s head, so perfect and round, was carved of pale, creamy wood, that the blue eyes and pink lips had been painted on. It was a doll.

Kneeling, she uncovered the wooden infant completely, shaking her head in wonder. About the size of a newborn, it was perfectly proportioned and carefully dressed. The little face looked startlingly lifelike, with full, dimpled cheeks and a well-fed double chin. Its head was covered with a neatly fitted white linen coif, from beneath which peeked strands of fine blond hair, apparently human. Its costume, although fashioned from humble brown homespun, had been styled like the tunic of a royal babe, with rich embroidery and long, fur-lined sleeves rolled back to expose the linen kirtle beneath. A little wooden cross hung on a leather cord around its neck. The plump little hands were bare, but each foot was encased in a slipper of soft deerskin.

Martine pulled off her gloves and pressed the cushion on which the doll lay. It was stuffed with feathers, not the coarse straw with which the family had made do. She stroked the smoothly polished cheeks, the fur that lined the sleeves, the tiny hands. As she began to lift it from its cradle, Thorne’s voice broke the silence: “
Don’t
.”

She recoiled from the cradle and turned toward the voice. The Saxon stood in the doorway, ducking his head and holding the bearskin aside, his large form silhouetted against the light. Dust motes, stirred up by Martine’s entrance, formed a glittering haze in the air between them.

He dropped the bearskin and slowly walked toward her, his eyes on the doll in its cradle. Squatting next to her, he said, in a gentler voice, “It’s old. I wouldn’t want it to be damaged.” Carefully he rearranged the doll exactly as she had lain and centered the little cross on its chest.

He handled the doll as tenderly as it if were a human babe, and Martine yearned to know what lay hidden beneath his carefully governed features. “It’s an extraordinary doll,” she said. “Did it belong to your sister?”

Still staring at the round little face, he said, “It
was
my sister. I carved it in Louise’s likeness, soon after she was born.”

“
You
carved it?” He nodded. “And the cradle as well?”

“Aye.” He rubbed the dusty wood with his thumb. ‘Twas Louise’s cradle, and when she outgrew it, it became Bathilda’s.”

Martine smiled. “Bathilda. I’ll never get used to your Saxon names. Did you... you didn’t sew her clothes, did you?”

He raised a bemused eyebrow. “Nay, my talent with needle and thread extends only as far as imping. My mother sewed the clothes. I asked her to dress her as she would a princess.”

“She did a good job,” Martine said. “When I was a child, I used to dream about gowns with long, fur-lined sleeves. You must have loved Louise very much to go to so much trouble for her.”

He gazed at her for a long moment, his eyes luminous in the dim room, and then continued to study the doll. “I was ten years old when she was born. There had been other babies in between, but Louise was the only one who lived past the first year. She was different from the beginning, so healthy and fat, and happy. She was very spirited, like Ailith. My parents couldn’t control her, but she listened to me. Wherever I went, she followed. She was my little shadow. Every night, in my prayers, I thanked God for not taking her from us, as He had the others. And I promised Him that if He let her continue to live, I would care for her and protect her and make certain no harm ever came to her.”

Grimly he shook his head, and when he spoke again, his voice sounded strained. “But I broke my promise. And for that, Louise paid with her life, as did my parents.”

Martine stared at Thorne, hunched over the little cradle, his transparent blue eyes filled with pain.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered.

He reached into the cradle to adjust Bathilda’s coif. In a distant, almost hard tone, he said, “At seventeen, I took up the cross. I knew my family needed me, but I was very young and blinded by faith. Instead of staying home and helping my parents to make a living, instead of protecting Louise as I had promised God, I followed a foreign king on a doomed Crusade. I was a fool.”

His sorrow overwhelmed Martine. “You were trying to serve Christ. You were—”

“A fool,” he spat out. “When I returned two years later and came looking for my family, I found this cottage as you see it, and not a soul in sight. I was told that these woods had been taken by Forest Law not long after I had left and that my parents and Louise had moved to a village not far from here.”

He clenched his jaw. “My parents hated towns. It must have been hell to have to live in one. If I had been here, I would have built them another home in another piece of forest, one where they’d be allowed to hunt and chop wood. But I wasn’t here, and my father was too old to do it himself. I abandoned them, and in doing so, I condemned them to death.”

“What... what happened?”

“There was a fire.” He shook out the little blanket, and dust blossomed in the air like smoke. Martine covered her face with her hands. “One breezy night someone’s candle got too close to his thatch, and within minutes the entire village was in flames. They began rebuilding the very next day. ‘Twas the seventh time in ten years that particular village had burned to the ground.”

Martine opened her eyes to find him replacing the blanket over the cradle.

He said, “They collected all the unclaimed bones and buried them in a mass grave.” He smoothed the blanket carefully, as if it shielded not a wooden doll, but the precious, unclaimed body of his sister.

Martine wanted to comfort him, but what could she say? The depth of his grief shook her profoundly. He seemed so self-contained, from all appearances the absolute master of his feelings. Yet he hadn’t mastered them at all, she now knew. He’d merely shielded them—shielded the raw hurt, the stinging self-reproach—behind the armor of his celebrated self-control.

“I found Bathilda here,” he said, “just as you see her now, carefully dressed and arranged in her cradle, with this cloth to protect her.”

“Why was she left behind?” Martine asked. “It looks as if they took everything else of value.”

“I’ve wondered that myself,” he said. “Perhaps Louise thought Bathilda would be happier here in her own home than in a town. She was trying to protect her from a fate that she couldn’t avoid herself.”

“And you left her here.”

He shrugged. “Louise knew best. This is Bathilda’s home. She belongs here.”

He rose and reached for Martine’s hand to help her up. Even after she had gained her feet, he didn’t let go of it, but held it firmly in his. His warm, callused skin felt wonderful against her own.

“I never speak of these things,” he said. “Not only because they’re sad, but because they make me feel ashamed. I don’t know why I told you... I hope you don’t mind.”

She saw into his eyes, saw his uncertainty, his grief. The worst grief, she knew, oftentimes stemmed from guilt. “Of course I don’t mind. But you mustn’t feel ashamed. You’re not to blame.”

“Yes, I am. Lying to myself would only compound my guilt.”

“But—”

“I left my family at the mercy of the Normans because I was young and misguided. I’m older now, and much less naive. ‘Tis the power of the Normans—the power of wealth and property, of land—that enables them to crush the Saxons beneath their heels. The only way I can fight that power is to claim some of it for my own. That’s why I must become landed.”

Perhaps that’s why he’d told her about Louise, so that she’d understand the reasons for his ambition, understand his part in compelling her to marry Sir Edmond.

He looked tired, as if it had drained him to reveal this much of himself to her. “Your brother will be waiting for us. Let’s eat so that we can get to St. Dunstan’s before nightfall.”

He led her by the hand to the doorway, releasing her abruptly when he pushed aside the bearskin and saw Rainulf a few yards away, drinking from a wineskin. Was it wrong to let him touch her? She quickly surveyed her conscience and decided that it wasn’t. He had never taken liberties with her. How would she react if he did? She pondered that for a moment, but this time there was no easy answer. This time her conscience and her heart were at odds. She hoped that she would never have to choose between them.

*   *   *

From the moment Martine rode out of the woods and saw St. Dunstan’s nestled within the cool green valley below, she felt a sense of contentment such as she had not enjoyed since leaving St. Teresa’s over a year before. Looking down upon the neat arrangement of long, narrow stone buildings, she marveled at how peaceful and orderly they looked—and how inviting, compared to tomblike Harford Castle.

The monastery was surrounded not by walls and ditches, as with a castle or a great town, but by orchards, pastures, and tidy cultivated fields. As Martine and her companions descended into the valley, she saw, here and there, the industrious figures of lay brothers and servants tending the ripening crops and herding flocks of sheep. A river meandered over the valley floor like a bright blue ribbon that had fluttered down from the heavens; St. Dunstan’s had been built upon its bank. In the distance, on a hilltop beyond the valley, rose a strangely beautiful round castle, which Thorne explained was the partially built keep that young Lord Anseau had been constructing at the time of his murder; his domain, the barony of Blackburn, encompassed the monastery.

Religious convents tended to follow a predictable layout, so Martine had little trouble identifying St. Dunstan’s various structures. To the east, surrounding the central cloister, were the monks’ private buildings, all of which would be off limits to her during her visit. She would be expected to confine her movements to the prior’s lodge, stable, guest house, kitchen, and other public buildings clustered around the courtyard to the west. The church stood between this public area and the inner precincts, accessible to both from different entrances.

St. Dunstan’s was not an abbey but a priory, the small satellite of a large Benedictine abbey to the south. At an abbey, Brother Matthew, the prior, would have been second-in-command. Here, he served as the highest administrator, although important decisions had to be approved by his superior abbot.

The priory’s modest size and somewhat isolated location were to Martine’s advantage. At a more important and visible monastery, she might not have been permitted to remain past sundown, despite her rank. But Matthew seemed to have no hesitation about bending the rules, having written to Rainulf that his sister was more than welcome, if he wanted to bring her.