A Crowning Mercy (51 page)

He grinned. 'You're hot.'

'No, I'm not.'

'You're hot, I'm hot, and I'm going for a swim.'

He stood up, moved a few paces to one side, and undressed. She did not look at him. She stared across the stream to where a field of barley shimmered in the heat, the grain dotted with poppies. She was being foolish, she knew, yet she could not control herself.

Toby ran into the water, a white shape at the edge of her vision, then threw himself into the stream's centre. He bellowed with delight, sending up a glittering fountain of water, and then he was standing up to his chest in the stream's centre and brushing water from his eyes. 'It's wonderful. Come in.'

'It's too cold.'

'You're hot.'

She saw the dark bruise on his shoulder, the misshapen joint. 'Have you got your glove on?'

'Come and find out.' He grinned at her, then pushed himself downstream, swimming away until he was hidden from her by a great stand of nettles. His voice came back strong to her. 'You can come in now. I can't see you.'

'You said that last year!'

He laughed, then was silent.

She was hot. Her dress seemed sticky, her skin prickly. The air quivered over the barley, the sun was bright on poppies and cornflowers.

She wanted to swim. She remembered the pure pleasure of it, the release of a soul in darkness, and she wanted to feel the stream about her body as if the clean, cool water might wash away the defilement of Faithful Unto Death Hervey's hands. She waited for Toby to say something more, wishing him to ask her again, but he was silent. She shouted instead. 'I'm staying here!'

'Good! Whatever you want, my love!'

She waited, frowning. He said nothing more, nor did he reappear from behind the nettle stand. She waited. 'Where are you?'

'Here!'

She stood, walked to the nettles, and saw him twenty yards downstream. He grinned at her. 'You see? I couldn't see you.'

'Go further!' She waved to where the stream disappeared behind a bend thick with buckthorn and willow.

'Why should I? You're not coming in.'

'I might if you go past the willow.'

He made a dutiful face, turned, and swam a few strokes. 'Far enough?'

'Twice as far! Go on!'

He laughed and swam on, past the willow tree and into the shade of the buckthorns. She stood to see if he would come back, but he did not, so she walked back to where his clothes were thrown down and she looked, from the golden seal, casually discarded, to the sun-bright water. She wanted to go in, she wanted so much to go in. She was hot, she had dreamed so often of this, yet she knew why she really wanted to go into the water. The shadow must be destroyed.

She walked back to the nettles. She could not see Toby in the shadow of the tree. She called out, 'Someone will see!'

There was no reply.

She walked back to his clothes, seeing the leather coat dropped on the sword, and then she looked all about her. The countryside was empty, not a person in sight, and she persuaded herself that she could swim quickly in the stream, be in and out of the water before Toby had time to come back from the trees.

One of the two horses lifted its head and stared at her, making her feel foolish. She stared again at the horizon, at the edge of a wood a half mile away, then up and down the stream. She was hot and nervous.

She had been frightened when she swam before, but that had been a fear of Matthew Slythe and his leather belt, and this time the fear was quite different as she took off shoes and stockings, undid her stomacher, unlaced her dress, and then paused. She crouched, as she used to, looking about her. Her heart beat as it used to beat, its sound loud in her ears, and then, decisively, she pulled the dress over her head and dropped it beside Toby's clothes. She fumbled at the laces of the petticoat, feeling the heat of the sun on her bare back, and then she stood, the petticoat fell, and she was naked. She ran for the water's cover.

It had not changed. It felt so clean, so cold, so good, and it reached every part of her, flooding her. She had forgotten the sheer joy of it. She ducked her head, then swam with clumsy strokes into the stream's centre, feeling the current tug at her, and her feet brushed long weeds as she turned with the water. It was good, so good, and the water was strong on her, lifting her and cleaning her. She swam nearer to the bank where she could kneel in the current, covered to her neck, and let the water flow around her.

'Isn't it good?' Toby was smiling at her just forty yards away. He ducked his head, came up again, and swam closer. He stopped thirty yards away and she wondered whether she should run now for the bank, for her clothes, but then he stood up in the stream, the water to his waist, and grinned. 'Come and see an eight-fingered man catch a trout.'

She shook her head.

'I'll come to you, then.'

'Stay there, Toby!'

He began wading, his progress slow against the current. 'When we're married we must do this every summer. If we get Lazen back we could put a wall round some of the moat. Would you like that?'

She nodded, too frightened to speak.

He grinned, pretending not to see her crouching lower in the water. 'Of course it would be better in the Lazen stream. I suppose I could threaten the villagers with death if they came to watch us, but it seems a little extreme.' He was close now, just ten yards away. 'People will think we're very strange if we swim.'

'Stay there, Toby!' Faithful Unto Death Hervey was sliding his hands over her, Scammell was leering at her, the whole tribe of men was laughing at her nakedness. 'Don't come near me!' She was kneeling low, her arms crossed in front of her breasts.

Toby stopped. He was six or seven yards from her, smiling. 'Campion?' He spoke with infinite gentleness, and then suddenly his voice changed.

He screamed, his face screwing up in agony, and his right hand flew to his bruised left shoulder, his misshapen shoulder, and the scream became a moan of pain that stopped as he fell sideways. The current snatched at him. His head thrashed from side to side in torment.

'Toby!'

The stream was carrying him, his teeth clenched uselessly against the sob of pure pain. He scrabbled for a foothold.

Campion forgot her fear, forgot her nakedness. She rose in the water, pushed towards him, reached for him. 'Toby!'

His head thrashed. A gloved hand came out of the stream and she snatched for it, missed, but then she caught his right arm and his weight swung him away from her. She cried out as the arm slipped from her and she threw herself forward, desperate now, trying to haul his body upright, and suddenly she was aware that he was holding her, that his feet were firm on the stream's gravel, that his right hand was in the small of her back, pressing her close. Green eyes looked down at her.

'Toby!'

'Shh.'

'You cheated.' She did not know whether to laugh, but suddenly she was shivering for her body was against his and she felt his right hand stroking, stroking, and his touch was as gentle as if she was a silver fish hiding in dark reeds. 'Toby?'

His gloved left hand lifted her face and she kissed him, her eyes closed because she did not know where to look, and she put her arms about his bare waist, then hid her face on his shoulder. The fear was still there, but he seemed to be protecting her from it, and she could feel an excitement too. She clung to him, knowing that this was what she had dreamed of in Werlatton in those nights when love was a vain hope beyond her reach. 'Toby?'

'Shh.' He carried her from the water, lay her on the grass and she dared not speak nor open her eyes. She waited for the pain, even wanting it, and her hands stroked the muscles on his back as he loved her, riding over her pain, and when it was done he took her to the water again, washed her, and only then did she look at him. She was shy.

He smiled. 'Was it so horrible?'

She shook her head. She crouched low in the water. 'I'm sorry.'

'What for?'

'Being stupid.'

'You weren't.'

She looked at him. 'You cheated.'

'I know.'

She laughed, then asked the embarrassing question that was important to her. 'Was it good for you?'

'I'm supposed to ask you that.'

'No, I mean it. Was it?'

He smiled at her. 'Never better.'

'Better than all those May Days?'

'Better than I ever dreamed possible.'

She laughed, blushing with embarrassment. 'You're sure?'

'There's only one way you'll find out.'

'How?'

'See if I want to do it again.'

She splashed him with water, looked down the stream, then back to him. 'Do you?'

They made love again, and this time she looked at him, and she held him close, knowing the shadow had been taken away. Later, after another swim in the cool, clean water, they lay on the grass and let the sun dry them. Campion, naked to the flawless sky, had her head on the saddle, while Toby, propped on one elbow beside her, traced a finger down her pale, slim body. 'You're very beautiful.'

'Your mother says my breasts will get bigger if we make love.'

He laughed. 'We'll have to measure them. You know how fathers measure their children growing with notches on a doorpost? We'll do the same with you. I can show guests.'

She laughed, turning to look at him, and loving the feeling of his fingers on her belly. She reached out with her right hand and plucked one of the dark red hairs from his chest. 'He loves me. Does that hurt?'

'Yes.'

She pulled another, still damp. 'He loves me not.'

'Stop it, I'm a tired man.'

'I can't stop now.' She tugged a third. 'He loves me.'

He put his hand on hers. 'We'll leave it at that one.'

'If you want.' She smiled at him, happy. They kissed, then lay with their arms about each other.

The Seal of St Luke lay discarded with their clothes, forgotten for this moment, as far away as the war from this private, warm place. She tasted his skin with her tongue. 'Will it always be like this?'

'If we want it.'

'I want it.'

The stream ran clean beneath a flawless sky and Campion knew peace.

28

'The rain,' Lady Margaret announced from the window, 'will delay itself until tomorrow.' This was not an opinion, rather an order to Almighty God who, from Campion's sleepy view in bed, had different plans. The sky over Oxford was grey. September had started with bleak weather.

Lady Margaret stood over the bed. 'Do you intend to lie there all day?'

Campion shook her head. 'No.'

'It is a quarter past six, child, and I have delayed breakfast till half past.'

'I shall be there.'

Lady Margaret looked down at her. 'You're looking much better, child. Whatever my son did to you a week ago was obviously long overdue.' With that she swept from the room, shouting for Enid, calling downstairs to the kitchens, stirring the household into what would be its busiest day. She left Campion amused and a little astonished. Amused because Lady Margaret so obviously approved of her son prematurely deflowering his bride, and astonished that she herself had been so transparent. She had tried to hide the shadow across her life, and now she knew that it had been observed all along by both mother and son.

The shadow was gone, and that was proper because today should be a day of no shadows. Today was the day that proved even the wildest dreams could come true, today she would marry.

Lady Margaret at breakfast was less optimistic. 'He may not turn up at church, dear. I ejected him from the house last night and I have great doubts as to his sobriety this morning. He's probably fallen in love with a tapster's daughter and eloped. I had a third cousin who once fell in love with her father's chief stable-man.'

'You did?'

'I just said so.' The Roman nose sniffed at the birch tea and decided it was drinkable. 'They married her off to a particularly dull clergyman in the Fens. I suspect they rather hoped she would drown, but she had nine children and became a thorn in the ample flesh of the Bishop of Ely. Do eat, child.'

The wedding dress was the most magnificent that could be made in Oxford. The petticoat was of white silk, worked all over with small flowers in pale blue silk thread. Enid, under Lady Margaret's directions, laced the petticoat tight and then picked up the wedding dress itself from the bed.

It was mostly of white satin, brilliant white, the skirt folded back at the front to show the petticoat, and the two folds held in place by rows of blue silk roses. There were no hooks or laces on the dress. Instead Enid tightened it by threading blue ribbons into the holes at the back of the dress, tying each ribbon in a large bow. The sleeves of the dress were also attached by bows to the bodice, each bow would yield to a single pull. The collar of the dress, heavy and stiff, was of silk brocade, white and cream, the weave expensive and beautiful.

There was more. The shoes, that daringly showed under the hem of her petticoat when she walked, were covered in silver satin and each had a blue flower on its toe. Her earrings were sapphire, the fillet in her hair was silver and from it hung seven yards of lace that Lady Margaret had worn at her own wedding. Lady Margaret twitched the lace into place. 'One more thing.'

'More?'

'Try not to be impatient, child.' Lady Margaret went to her workbox. 'Here.'

The lace gloves, edged with pearls, were in Lady Margaret's hands. Campion looked at them, remembering the night she had found them in Matthew Slythe's hiding place in his great chest, and she knew that these gloves had been her mother's. Kit Aretine, doubtless, had given them to his 'angel', and perhaps she had hoped, against hope itself, that she would wear them at her own wedding. They had been sent to Werlatton, the only possessions of Agatha Prescott that still survived. Lady Margaret sniffed. 'I brought them from Lazen when that odious little man evicted me. I can't think why you're crying, child.'

'Oh, Lady Margaret!' Campion wondered if her mother could see her from heaven now. She pulled the gloves on, delicate and fine. 'How will he put the ring on?'