Rose Bride (38 page)

Margerie looked back at her steadily. Christina’s gown was slightly soiled and askew, as though the young couple had been kissing and sporting together under cover of the trees. Though there was no reason why they should not play at lovebirds out of doors in this fine weather, Margerie thought, and ruefully considered what she would do with her own husband if he were at home.

‘This will be my last walk until after my confinement, yes. You are right, it was foolish of me to walk so far from Applegate. And onto your land too.’ She bit her lip, suddenly realising that this hill was on land belonging to the manor. ‘Please forgive me for trespassing. But it is such a fine day, and the house is so dark and cool, I did not want to miss coming out in the sunshine for the last time.’

‘Walk wherever you like, mistress. I shall be pleased to welcome you here as often as you like.’ Master Delacour winked at her; he had his arm about his wife’s waist, and Christina seemed flushed and uncomfortable, even a little jealous of his attentions to her. ‘My wife is with child, and expects to be brought to bed early in the new year.’

‘But that is marvellous news.’ Margerie smiled, though in truth she was a little concerned by Christina’s sick look. ‘Please accept my felicitations!’

‘I thank you,’ he said, grinning broadly. ‘Would you care to dine with us tonight at the manor house? Your mother-in-law, Mistress Tulkey, will be there, for she is Christina’s companion these days. It would be good to see all three ladies together at the same table.’

Her smile faded. ‘Oh,’ she murmured, and looked away.

Virgil had strictly forbidden her to speak to his mother in his absence. She did not want to go against his express command, yet she did not wish to seem rude. What possible excuse could she give?

‘What a generous invitation, sir. But I am afraid—’

‘Master Elton would not like it?’

She met his eyes frankly then, biting her lip. ‘Forgive me, sir. You are very kind.’

‘Never mind. We can bring about a reconciliation between you all another time. Perhaps when the child is born.’

She nodded with relief. ‘Perhaps.’

One of the manor tenants called to him at that moment from across the field, a stocky man with a drooping hat pulled low over his head.

Delacour’s face darkened. ‘That’s Master Brookes. I wonder what he wants now. More complaints about the well running dry, I suppose. As though I control the rainfall.’ He bowed to Margerie. ‘Forgive me, I had better speak to the man. Though in truth I would rather turn him and his family out of their house, for they are always late with the rent.’

‘My father’s oldest tenants,’ Christina muttered, tugging on his sleeve.

‘Yes, yes, I shall be kind.’ He bent and kissed her on the mouth, despite Margerie’s presence, and Christina’s arms came up at once, clutching his dark head. He was breathing thickly when he straightened. ‘Can you walk back to the house alone?’

Christina nodded, though she was even more breathless now, and seemed too weak to walk another step. ‘Go, go.’

‘I will help Mistress Delacour down the hill,’ Margerie offered, and the young man turned, smiling and bowing in an extravagant manner.

‘Thank you, mistress,’ Delacour said, and raked her with an openly admiring stare. ‘You are a good neighbour indeed.’

And with that he was gone, vaulting a withy fence one-handed to speak to his tenant.

Christina watched him until he was out of sight, then turned to Margerie with an undisguised air of resentment. ‘Not content with stealing Virgil from me, now you would take my husband too? I thought the courtiers cruel when they called you wanton, but I see now how it is. Even now, heavy with child, you give that little smile and look unsure of yourself, and men fall over themselves to bed you.’

‘No, no indeed!’

‘It is your . . . your red hair, I suppose.’ Christina looked her up and down. ‘The mark of a whore.’

Margerie was shocked into silence.

‘I do not need your help,’ Christina said coldly, and began to descend the hill clumsily. She did not seem steady on her feet though, and after a few hundred paces slipped and fell awkwardly, crying out in pain. Margerie hurried down to her, careful not to slip herself, for the babe was so large now, it was hard to move with any grace.

‘Can you stand?’ she asked, helping the woman to sit up.

‘Leave me, leave me.’

Yet when she put an arm about her shoulders, Christina did not push her away. She sat rocking back and forth, breathing harshly.

‘What is the matter with you?’ Margerie asked quietly. ‘It is not the baby, is it? You are sick.’

‘I have a . . . a condition. My heart. When I was younger, the doctors thought it was a wasting disease. I spent years in bed. They said I would die before I reached the age of twelve.’ Her voice broke. ‘Do you know what it’s like to be . . . to be told you will die young and never live to marry, to love a man and bear his children?’

Margerie shook her head. ‘Poor child.’

‘Virgil loved me. We were friends, though he was much older than me. He was like an older brother at first, and then . . . I thought . . . When I was still a girl, he promised he would marry me.’ Christina looked at her blankly, her eyes wide. ‘And then you came along. And I knew then that I would never marry. Never do those things with a man . . .’

‘But you have married a fine young man,’ Margerie tried to reassure her. ‘And when the child is born—’

‘I am dying!’ Christina burst out, then buried her face in her hands. ‘I will be dead before this child is born. It will die within me. There are still days when I can get out of bed, and . . . and be a good wife to my husband. But I can feel my heart like a fist in my chest. It hurts . . . it is squeezing the lifeblood out of me.’

‘Have you seen a doctor?’

Christina nodded, wiping her damp face with the back of her hand. ‘He tells me to rest. To stop . . . stop being intimate with my husband. But Humphrey says it is all nonsense. That I am pretending my heart hurts so I may have his pity, just as Virgil pitied me when I was young.’ She looked at Margerie, her chin raised. ‘But I do not want pity. I just want his love. I would rather die in his arms than have him pity me. For if he pitied me, he could never love me again. Not like he does now. Can you understand that?’

‘Oh yes,’ Margerie replied. ‘I understand.’

Margerie helped her to stand, and Christina began to hobble down the hill, resting on her arm. At the bottom was a wooden bridge over a stream, and Christina stopped there, waving her away.

‘I can go on alone from here, I thank you.’ She hesitated, looking at Margerie’s belly. ‘May I?’

Margerie nodded.

Tentatively, Christina laid a hand on Margerie’s belly. Her hand jerked and she stared at Margerie in shock. ‘It . . . It kicked me.’

‘Yes, he does that often.’

‘He?’

‘Or she.’ Margerie smiled shyly. ‘Though the kicks are sometimes so hard, I feel sure it is a male.’

Christina gave her a hard, uncompromising stare, leaving Margerie uncomfortable under her glare. ‘Was the child in your womb fathered by Virgil, or by some other man?’ she demanded. ‘Or do you not know?’

‘
What?
’

‘We have all heard your reputation hereabouts, do not look at me like that. Come, tell the honest truth with God as your witness. I will tell no one your answer, I swear it on my life.’ Christina crossed herself. ‘See? Now the truth will go with me to the grave. But I must know before I die if this is Virgil’s child or not.’

‘As God is my witness,’ Margerie told her, also crossing herself, ‘this child is Virgil’s. I have only lain with one other man my whole life, and that was Lord Wolf, when I was only a little younger than you are now.’

Christina’s eyes widened, but she said nothing.

‘What you have heard,’ Margerie insisted, afraid the other woman still thought her dishonest, ‘were mere lies and gossip. Virgil is the father of my child, believe me. There has been no other man, but only him.’

‘I do believe you,’ Christina whispered. ‘For Virgil is not a man to trust a woman easily. If he chose you as his bride, and brought you home to Applegate, it was for a special reason. Not merely that you were with child and in trouble.’

Margerie bit her lip, then took a dangerous leap. ‘Mistress Delacour . . . Christina . . . What is wrong with Virgil? Why is he so . . . such a hard man to know? And why does he seem to hate his own mother?’

‘If Virgil has not told you such things himself, it is not my place to do so.’

‘Please, I beg of you.’

Christina sighed. ‘Virgil’s father died when he was a young boy, about nine years of age. I was only a small child then myself, so I do not rightly know.’

‘Yes, he told me about his father’s death. Then how his widowed mother married Master Tulkey.’

‘Master Tulkey was a brutal man and a cruel stepfather to Virgil. When Virgil was older, he tried to forbid us from playing together, even though we were close neighbours. He said it weakened a boy to have such a young girl as a friend.’ Christina sounded angry, her mouth trembling. ‘Virgil defied him and came to see me secretly. To read Latin with me, and teach me how to riddle it out. He knew how boring it was for me, you see, always in bed, always alone.’

‘And Master Tulkey found out?’

Christina nodded, staring away at nothing. ‘He beat Virgil. He beat him every night for a sennight. Thirty strokes of the rod every night. I knew he had been beaten, but Virgil did not tell me the extent of it until much later. Until quite recently, in fact.’ She swallowed, a look of horror on her face. ‘He made Virgil sleep in the cellar until he would promise never to visit me again. But Virgil refused. So he kept him there for days. Weeks, perhaps. I do not know all the details. But Master Tulkey would not let his wife take down anything to the boy but bread and water.’

‘God’s blood!’

‘At last, he let Virgil out. And Virgil came straight over to see me at the manor house. He would not allow his stepfather to choose his friends for him, he told me, as though such punishments meant nothing.’

Christina shook her head, her voice very small. ‘But I knew better. Oh, his spirit was not broken. He would never have allowed Master Tulkey the satisfaction of
that
. But Virgil never smiled the same way again. It was as though the light had gone out of him, shut up in that dark place for so long.’

‘I had no idea.’ Margerie felt like crying herself. She wanted to draw that scared little boy into her and hold him tight. ‘Poor child.’

Her look almost feverish, Christina suddenly squeezed her hand. ‘You will make him happy, won’t you? Virgil is still my friend. And I miss him.’

Margerie embraced her, agreeing, though she was not sure she could make Virgil happy.

She was not sure anything in this world could make Virgil truly happy after what he had suffered.

‘Master Elton?’

A tall figure stepped out of the shadows, and Virgil stopped, his hand falling to his dagger hilt. It was late at night, a cool evening in early September, and the man had been waiting patiently outside his locked workshop instead of approaching him in the morning. Which meant the man knew he had been in attendance on the queen that evening, and would return here before bed.

Which also meant this was some court intrigue, Virgil thought, instantly on his guard against treachery.

‘May I help you, sir?’

‘A moment alone, if you please.’ The man stepped into the dim flicker of torchlight from further down the corridor, and Virgil recognised him at once. ‘We need to talk in private, Master Elton.’

‘My lord Munro,’ he muttered in some surprise, not having expected to find his wife’s former lover waiting for him, but he recollected himself and bowed. ‘A pleasant surprise, my lord. Let me unlock the door and we may talk more privily within.’

The workshop was dark and gloomy. Virgil kindled a lantern and set it on the table, illuminating the little space. ‘Now my lord, how may I be of assistance?’

Lord Munro studied him broodingly. ‘You take an oath, do you not, when first you enter in this profession of doctor?’

‘Yes, my lord. The Hippocratic Oath, after the learned Greek physician Hippocrates.’

‘And this oath, it prevents you from speaking abroad any secret you may hear in the course of your work? Even if it does not closely concern a patient?’

‘Indeed, my lord.’ Virgil quoted the relevant passage in Latin, ‘
Ea arcana esse ratus, silebo. Of those things which should be kept hidden, I shall be silent.
Whatever secrets I hear, whatever might prove shameful if repeated, whether about a patient or any other man, I must keep to myself. The oath is clear on that point.’

Munro nodded slowly, seeming satisfied with this. The nobleman then withdrew from his doublet a bundle of folded papers, sealed in red wax, and threw this on the table between them.

‘Well, then, master doctor,’ he said clearly. ‘With the contents of these papers, I hereby discharge my debt to your wife, Margerie Elton, formerly Margerie Croft, with whom I entered into secret business one year ago.’