She heard him laugh, then moan deeply. There were no more words between them, just passion that built and built until finally Severin shouted to the beamed ceiling.
He collapsed over her, kissing her until she had the strength to turn her face up to gain some kisses on her mouth.
“This is very tiring work, Severin.”
“Aye,” he said, nipping her bottom lip between his teeth, “would you believe me if I told you that most men would prefer battle to this wearisome job?”
Her laughter rang out. Trist raced up his bare master’s back to peer down at her over Severin’s shoulder.
“Aye, my lord, and most women would doubtless prefer shoveling ashes out of the ovens to this demanding task.”
Trist mewled loudly. And Severin thought it was strange to be lying on top of a woman, laughing and speaking nonsense and enjoying it quite a lot.
14
THEY DIDN’T LEAVE FOR ROSEHAVEN THE FOLLOWING morning. A messenger arrived just as Hastings finished drinking a goblet of Gilbert the goat’s milk. She rose quickly when she heard shouts from outside.
It was a messenger from Langthorne. Lord Severin’s mother had disappeared.
He asked very softly, “How is this possible? My mother was guarded constantly. I selected the women myself before I came here to Oxborough. What happened?”
The messenger didn’t like the lord’s voice. He swallowed, got a grip on himself, and said, “It appears that one of the women became ill. Your mother asked to tend her and the other woman agreed. When she returned to the sick chamber, your mother was gone. I’m sorry, my lord. Sir Roger has mounted a search. His master-at-arms, your man Thurston, told me I should come to you. He is worried. Sir Roger did not wish to tell you yet, but Thurston said it was your right to know. By the time I left Langthorne, they had still not found her.”
Severin stared at the man a moment, then waved him away. “Get him ale,” he called to Alice. “His voice cracked from thirst even as he spoke to me.”
Hastings knew, however, that the messenger’s voice had cracked because he’d been terrified that Severin would kill him.
“I fear I must go to Langthorne, Hastings. There is no time for this Rosehaven, no time for anything else.”
“We will leave within the hour, Severin.”
He arched a dark eyebrow. “I would make better time were I to have just men with me.”
“You will see that I shan’t slow you. Besides, when we find your mother, perhaps I could give her some herbs that would make her better. What is her illness, Severin?”
“She is mad.”
Madness? Hastings wondered if her father had known about this. Surely he hadn’t, else he would never have picked Severin to continue his line, not if there was madness in it. “Tell me more specifically what she does or says or how she acts.”
“She can act very normally, converse with you like she is still the lady of the keep, then, suddenly, her eyes will go blank. She will say strange things. She will not know who she is or who you are. Several times I saw her throw herself to her knees and try to hit her head against the stones. Then she will sleep for many hours. When she wakes, she is usually normal again. But nothing is ever certain. That is why I had two women to keep close to her.”
“Ah.” It sounded like no madness Hastings had ever heard of. It sounded very strange indeed.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I must consult the Healer before we leave. Do you wish me to try to help her?”
“Very well, but Gwent and some of my men will accompany you. I don’t want to take a chance on losing you.”
She said nothing to that. She’d gone into the forest more times than she could count over the years to meet with the Healer. But now she was married and her husband wished to guard her. Protect her. Was he afraid that she would fall and hurt her toe? No, certainly not. She decided that protection from a man who made her feel as he did perhaps wasn’t such a bad thing at all.
“Give me leave to worry about you now, Hastings.”
She blinked up at him. “Do you now so easily read my mind, my lord?”
“Your thoughts are sometimes as clear to me as Edgar the wolfhound’s.”
That made her laugh. Without thought she kissed him, in front of the messenger, in front of all the people who were in the great hall.
“Aye, those thoughts of yours are simple and straightforward, but I mind not, Hastings. Take care and come back to me quickly.”
She frowned, saying, “Why wouldn’t this Sir Roger want you to know immediately that your mother had disappeared?”
“A very good question. I will look forward to his explanation.”
Hastings imagined that Sir Roger had kept quiet because he had a healthy desire to keep his hide intact. He was doubtless praying that he would find his overlord’s mother alive and thus escape Severin’s anger. It was not to be.
Hastings had always believed that the Healer was older than the sessile oaks that grew thick and strong by her cottage—that, indeed, she had magically appeared on the earth at the same time those trees had burst through the soil. But her face was unlined, her skin soft, her hair was black with but a few strands of gray weaving through it. She always wore a dark brown wool gown with a rope tied around her waist. For as long as Hastings could remember, the Healer had always looked the same.
The Healer wasn’t smiling at the group of men who rode to her cottage. She didn’t smile either when she saw Hastings, just waited patiently, her hands very still at her sides.
“Healer,” Hastings said as she dismounted her palfrey, Marella. “You look well. Ah, and here is Alfred.” The huge brindle cat leapt into her arms, making her stagger back. Hastings heard the men’s hoarse whispers. They were probably crossing themselves, for the cat surely had to be the largest in all of England. Hastings hugged Alfred, petted his big head, then set him down.
The Healer said, as she rubbed her bare toes against Alfred’s fat side, “He eats all my food. I am now the skinny one. He will bury me when the time comes. Now, Hastings, come inside and tell me what it is you wish.”
The smell within the small cottage nearly swamped the senses. There was basil, rosemary, foxglove, allium, hyssop, so many smells that collided with one another, blending and softening, forming new scents that dazzled the nose and made Hastings’s eyes water.
Hastings sat on a small stool and waited for the Healer to give her a cup of her own private potion, a sweet yet tart brew that she much enjoyed, but the Healer would never give her the recipe or ever send her away with more than that one single cup. She watched the Healer give a large wooden bowl of the potion to Alfred. The cat’s slurping was loud in the room.
“It is my lord’s mother,” Hastings said, then she told the Healer what Severin had told her. “He said she then would sleep. It seems to me that this sleeping is her mind’s way of renewing her, perhaps. Have you something that could help such a strange malady?”
The Healer looked through the narrow open door at the men who were milling about. She winced as one of them, paying no attention, let his horse back into the wood pile and knock logs to the ground. “I have always disliked men,” she said in that soft singsong voice of hers. “They tread upon my herbs because they never pay attention to anything that is beyond their noses. They belch and snore and their minds are lewd. Nay, I would rid the world of the animals if I could.”
“My husband isn’t like that.”
“It is too soon for you to know that. I imagine you believed he was Satan’s own spawn before you enjoyed pleasure with him. Aye, turn red, Hastings, but don’t lie to yourself. Your father was like that, as was Sir Richard de Luci. Aye, that one was a pig who killed his wife to have you. I am glad he failed, Hastings. Nor am I displeased that he managed to kill off that miserable wife of his before he failed. I have heard talk that all is not well at Sedgewick. There are forces at work there that will bring tragedy.”
“You speak of Eloise?”
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“Aye. Poor child. What chance could she have?”
“You heard that Lady Marjorie abuses Eloise?”
The Healer shrugged. “It would be nothing new, would it? But you will have a care, Hastings. Nothing is ever what it seems. Nothing. Don’t ever forget that. Now, let me give you some herbs that might help your husband’s mother. Ah yes, there are so many smiles and sighs now that you enjoy Lord Severin. Why did you bend, Hastings?”
“I do not like strife. I know nothing of men and thus I did not deal well with him. Dame Agnes and my serving girl, Alice, told me what to do. I decided to treat him well, nothing more, Healer.”
“He probably brags to his men that he has brought you to heel.”
“Perhaps I am the one who controls the heeling.”
The Healer shook her head. She smiled, it was a small thing, stingy even, but it was a smile. “You are guileless, Hastings. That is why you must have a care. Go now, I have business with my plants. Alfred, you may have no more potion now. Go terrorize the men outside. Meow at them and stretch up on your hind paws. It will scare them witless. Mayhap they will flee screaming into the forest and lose themselves and get eaten by boars. They are all worthless loutheads.”
Hastings touched her fingertips to the Healer’s arm and took her leave. Gwent said as he helped her mount Marella, “A strange woman. As for that cat, the beast is large enough to have a seat at a trestle table.”
“He eats enough for two men,” Hastings said. “Give him two seats.”
It rained all during the day, endless, ceaseless rain, turning the world gray, making them all miserable. There were twelve of them, all pressed against their horses’ necks. Hastings was relieved that she’d brought most of her herbs. Someone would surely sicken from this miserable weather. By six o’clock that first afternoon, Severin called a halt. In their path was Wigham Abbey, a stark gray-stone building built in the last century. It looked menacing in the dying afternoon light. Hastings shivered, not from the cold or the rain, but from the apprehensive feeling that pile of stones gave her.
The abbot, Father Michael, greeted Severin politely and welcomed them all into the cold great hall of the abbey. He was affable until he saw Hastings. He cleared his throat, saying, “My lord, your lady, of course, will not remain here. One of the brothers will escort her to another building, where she will remain until you are ready to resume your journey in the morning.”
“I don’t think so,” Severin said, nothing more. Hastings didn’t understand what was happening but she knew he was angry. So women weren’t allowed with the monks. Why did this seem to anger Severin?
“It is the way of our order, my lord. She will be fed. But she is not allowed to remain here with the men. It is considered a sacrilege. It is not done. Our Lord would not look kindly upon us for breaking one of his sacred orders.”
Hastings was on the point of telling her husband that she didn’t care, she just wanted to change from her wet clothes, when Severin drew his dagger from the wide leather belt at his waist. In a quick, graceful movement, he put the point to the abbot’s throat. “I know how you treat ladies, Father. I will not have my wife lying on a damp mattress with only a stingy thin blanket to cover her, shivering until her teeth chatter. I won’t have her drinking cold, thin soup that some monk slips into her cell whilst she isn’t looking. She will remain here, with me, with my men and your holy brothers.”
Father Michael opened his mouth, both astonished and infuriated. Severin simply pressed the tip of his knife into his throat. A drop of blood appeared. “It will be as I say, Father. I will ensure that she doesn’t send your monks into agonies of unfulfilled lust. She will remain at my side. Think of her as another man. Think of her as a budding brother whose hair is but overlong.”
Above all, the abbot wasn’t stupid. This man all garbed in gray didn’t seem to care that he, Father Michael, abbot to this long-lived order of Benedictines, was God’s emissary, that he would go to hell if he stuck that knife in the abbot’s throat. Father Michael would have to give in, but it galled him. All the lord’s men were wet to the bone, huddled together, but the woman, ah, that one standing there all proud, her long hair in damp masses down her back, as wet as the men were, he could still see how she was looking at him, at his helpless brothers. He knew she had put her husband up to this. She was a snare of the Devil. All females were. Seducers of honorable men, whores. She should be off by herself, away from men of goodwill and morality, she should—
“We are all wet, tired, and hungry. See to it, Father.”
The abbot nodded, his mouth a tight, thin line, and turned to his cowled brothers. His thin face was red, the pulse pounding in his neck, just beside that speck of blood. Hastings saw him cuff one of the brothers. She said, staring at the holy man who had so carelessly struck another, “Is that true, Severin? Women are kept separate? They are not treated well? I did not know this.”
Severin only shrugged. “It would not matter if the weather were warm and the sun bright in the sky. But in this dampness, you would surely become ill. I want you out of those wet clothes. Come along.”
“Why is this a rule, Severin?”
“I have been told that the Church still debates whether or not a woman even has a soul. Think on that, Hastings. If you don’t have a soul, then you should be forbidden the company of God’s perfect male creatures. You are not worthy. You are no better than an animal, at least in God’s eyes.”
“That is very strange. Father Carreg never said any of this to me.”
“Father Carreg isn’t stupid. He probably believed you would make his bowels watery if he preached such a thing at Oxborough. But this is usually the way of things. It was my mother who told me of this. Travelers are welcome at religious houses, but women are to be set aside because the priests believe they will taint the very sacred air with their wickedness.”
She looked perplexed until she smiled, a dimple appearing in her cheek. “I’ve tried to be wicked only with you.”
He laughed, took her hand, and followed the silent brother, who led them to his own cell. Severin left her to change. “I will change with the other men. Dress warmly, Hastings.”
The cell was dry and warm and smelled of sweet rosemary. When she returned to the main dining area, where there were six trestle tables set close together, she inhaled the odor of warm ale, fresh baked bread, and roasted chicken.
“This is not the normal fare for travelers,” Severin said to her. “I have paid dearly for this meal. It had better taste as good as it smells. I told the abbot that the food had to find favor with my wife else I would be displeased. I then touched my fingers to my knife. I enjoyed watching him pale.” He touched his palm to her cheek, then to her forehead. “You are warm to the touch. You feel all right?”
“Oh aye,” she said, and touched him back. “And you, my lord?”
“I believe,” he said slowly, looking down at her, “that if you continue as you are, all the brothers will gnaw their knuckles in the throes of lust. I promised the abbot that he was to think of you as just another man, a castrato, perhaps.”
She giggled and raised her voice to a high, squeaky wail, “Very well, then, I can even sing for my dinner. I will not kiss you, but I want to, Severin. Your mouth pleases me.”
“Stop it, Hastings. Ah, our meal is ready.”
Hastings said after she bit into a chicken wing, “Don’t stick your dagger through the abbot’s neck, ’tis well enough prepared.”
After dinner, Hastings checked all of the men. Tabar, one of the Oxborough men-at-arms, was overly warm, his chest heavy. Hastings mixed him a potion of warm milk and gentian and watched him drink it down. “Now, chew these columbine leaves if your throat becomes sore. Keep yourself warm, Tabar. Sleep close to the other men. Their body warmth will help.”
One of the brothers, a small, wiry man with great purity of expression, came to her after she gave Tabar the herbs. His look was furtive. “I have a toothache, my lady. The tooth looks healt
hy, but it must be rotting from the inside. Have you perhaps anything that would help me?”
“Aye, Father. Mix these ground delphinium seeds into a mug of wine or ale. It will relieve you. But the tooth must be pulled, Father. If it pains you, it cannot be long until it will cause you such agony that you must pull it.”
“Aye, I know it, but I am a coward. I would wait until the pain drives me into delirium. Then one of the other brothers could draw it for me.”
Suddenly, the abbot was there. “You come to this woman? You speak to her? You take the Devil’s evil potions from her?” He knocked the packet of delphinium seeds to the floor.
The brother looked ready to cry out his misery. He stared down at the scattered delphinium seeds beside his sandaled feet. “Father Michael,” he whispered, “it is just a small thing for the pain in my tooth. The lady does nothing evil.”
“What she gave you would produce evil visions in your sleep, Brother. You would dream of the flesh of women and this dream would corrupt you.”
Hastings didn’t say anything, but it was difficult. She wanted to kick the abbot. She wished he had the toothache. She wondered if he would suffer silently or chance dreaming of her.
“Come,” Severin said quietly, walking to her. “You can do nothing for the brother. No, don’t argue. The brother is a member of this order. He must follow the rules.”
He took her hand when she lagged, looking back at the poor brother who was holding his palm to his cheek. He pulled and she had to skip to keep up with his long strides.
“I do not wish to fluster the poor brothers. We will lie together as would a brother and his sister.” No sooner had they settled themselves in blankets on the narrow cot in the brother’s cell than there came a yell from the great hall.
Severin, whose hand had been on Hastings’s breast, cursed, leapt to his feet, and pulled on his clothes. Sword in hand, he was gone within moments.